Iranians may be ready to vote Ahmadinejad out of power

Um, this whole Florida bull****...thanks but no thanks. If you want to compare this horse**** to the American elections, at least acknowledge the fact that a small flaw was addressed or at least acknowledged, if not justly solved to a degree where an authoritarian like Ahmadinejad would never touch with a 5 foot pole. The irregularities in this election are flying off the charts and to the best of my knowledge, Ahmadinejad refuses to even address that.

 

You just blew any trace amount of credibility. Comparing Iran's election and vote counting to the very open process in Florida in 2000 is beyond dumb. You are just arguing for the sake of arguing, I hope. Have fun.

 

More accurately, how dare you doubt the decision made by our five free men in supreme court, you dumbass?

Does that help?

 

I think Iran's gov't is on the verge of collapsing.

I think within 30 days, we might see a coup.

 

How about this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/14/AR2009061401757.html

The report must be a fraud.

 

How about this:

About Those Iran Polls

Public opinion surveys are central to the Iranian opposition's argument that the elections there were rigged for incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: they cite unspecified polls showing the main challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi with a "strong lead in the final days of the campaign," according to the New York Times.

Now, a competing poll conducted by two American groups is being used as part of the pushback. In an op-ed in today's Washington Post, Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty write-up the results of their telephone poll carried out in mid-May, showing Ahmadinejad ahead "by a more than 2 to 1 margin - greater than his actual apparent margin of victory in Friday's election."

The validity of the unreleased Iranian surveys cannot be assessed in detail, but a closer look at the one sponsored by Terror Free Tomorrow and the New America Foundation reveals ample reason to be skeptical of the conclusions drawn from it.

Methodologically, this survey passes muster as it's relatively straightforward to pull a good sample of the Iranian population, using the country's publicly available population counts and listed telephone exchanges. But the poll was conducted from May 11 to 20, well before the spike in support for Mousavi his supporters claim.

(See here for a summary of available Iran polls that finds some evidence for Mousavi momentum late in the campaign.)

More to the point, however, the poll that appears in today's op-ed shows a 2 to 1 lead in the thinnest sense: 34 percent of those polled said they'd vote for Ahmadinejad, 14 percent for Mousavi. That leaves 52 percent unaccounted for. In all, 27 percent expressed no opinion in the election, and another 15 percent refused to answer the question at all. Six Eight percent said they'd vote for none of the listed candidates; the rest for minor candidates.

One should be enormously wary of the current value of a poll taken so far before such a heated contest, particularly one where more than half of voters did not express an opinion.


http://voices.washingtonpost.com/behind-the-numbers/2009/06/about_those_iran_polls.html

 

Grow up son and stop the name-calling. Who says I don't doubt the Supreme Court decision in 2000? The point is the OPENNESS of the process in 2000 was totally different than the cloak of secrecy in Iran. Can you not see the difference? Please answer.

When someone makes a good point, just shout back at them. When you grow up, you'll find out that doesn't work in real life.

 

What if the other guy won in similar fashion and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's people pour into the streets protesting? NYT must be calling for "law and order" and declaring the great victory of democracy.

Just a guess.

 

Why would Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fix the election against himself???? What you wrote doesn't make any sense.

You forget that Ahmadinejad CONTROLS those who count the votes.

Had the Iranians set up the election process to be independent of the leadership, then it would have legitimacy - but a poll can never be legit in this circumstance.

 

Sorry sir I put my words into your mouth. Maybe you'll never say "dumbass" (see post no. 322 by you, there were 3 letters less, though, so that doesn't count).

I apologize even though I don't mean you're such but myself.

 

How do you know he fixed it? From your trusted news sources?

May not relevant, but what do you think of US government's refusal to recognize Hamas's victory a few years ago and venezuela's election? Do they need a "certified democracy"?

"Bad guys" should never win.

 

Hamas's victory was not a question of rigging of votes. The U.S. didn't accept it because Hamas was deemed a terrorist group.

Venezuela's election - I don't know if there were monitors or not.

The point is this: If the candidate running gets to pick how the vote is tallied, who does the tallying, how the results are accumulated, released, and has doesn't have to show detailed results nor even show that the votes were even counted - how do you think that is going to turn out?

No election in the free world is done that way. It's a sham of an election. Of course he is going to win. I mean, please, are you being gullible here?

 

Here's a thought...

A lot of people are saying Moussavi is no different.

So maybe all these protests are planned (allowed)?

Until they finally place Moussavi in Ahmadinejad's seat, and make the people really "appreciate" what they protested for so hard?

Only for the people to end up realizing that Moussavi makes no difference and they won't have the guts to say "oops, we messed up!"?

What do you guys think?

 

Dead Iranian protester.....

 

Sir, US deemed Hamas's victory a "sham" democracy. US's crystally clear attitude is that if you are with us, your election is of real democracy; if you are against our will and interests, we will never give credit to your democracy. But really US's concern is not if you are a democracy or not but if you are our friend.

I would not comment on if the Iranian election is a fraud. I don't have enough information and I don't trust the information in this thread enough to make a decision. The point is that US (specifically the government and the rich coorperations it represents) needs an excuse to demonize its enemy. That's why US is so zealous about Iran's election. Otherwise why US doesn't make a big fuss about Saudi Arab's political system? It's all hypocritical and double standard.

Talk about media and psychological war and there is obviously an ongoing agenda indeed.

 

The U.S. gov't hasnt said the election was fraudulent in Iran.

 

Breaking news: Votes will be recoutned!!!!

BBC and CNN

 

It looks like it will not be a full recount, though.

 

I haven't been keeping up the last few days, but has any evidence emerged to suggest the election was rigged or is it still just speculation and conjecture?

I have some other issues I want to discuss, but I need to get caught with the situation first so they'll have to wait until after work today. I did run into this article:

The Iranian People Speak

By Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty
Monday, June 15, 2009

The election results in Iran may reflect the will of the Iranian people. Many experts are claiming that the margin of victory of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the result of fraud or manipulation, but our nationwide public opinion survey of Iranians three weeks before the vote showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin -- greater than his actual apparent margin of victory in Friday's election.

While Western news reports from Tehran in the days leading up to the voting portrayed an Iranian public enthusiastic about Ahmadinejad's principal opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, our scientific sampling from across all 30 of Iran's provinces showed Ahmadinejad well ahead.

Independent and uncensored nationwide surveys of Iran are rare. Typically, preelection polls there are either conducted or monitored by the government and are notoriously untrustworthy. By contrast, the poll undertaken by our nonprofit organizations from May 11 to May 20 was the third in a series over the past two years. Conducted by telephone from a neighboring country, field work was carried out in Farsi by a polling company whose work in the region for ABC News and the BBC has received an Emmy award. Our polling was funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

The breadth of Ahmadinejad's support was apparent in our preelection survey. During the campaign, for instance, Mousavi emphasized his identity as an Azeri, the second-largest ethnic group in Iran after Persians, to woo Azeri voters. Our survey indicated, though, that Azeris favored Ahmadinejad by 2 to 1 over Mousavi.

Much commentary has portrayed Iranian youth and the Internet as harbingers of change in this election. But our poll found that only a third of Iranians even have access to the Internet, while 18-to-24-year-olds comprised the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all age groups.

The only demographic groups in which our survey found Mousavi leading or competitive with Ahmadinejad were university students and graduates, and the highest-income Iranians. When our poll was taken, almost a third of Iranians were also still undecided. Yet the baseline distributions we found then mirror the results reported by the Iranian authorities, indicating the possibility that the vote is not the product of widespread fraud.

Some might argue that the professed support for Ahmadinejad we found simply reflected fearful respondents' reluctance to provide honest answers to pollsters. Yet the integrity of our results is confirmed by the politically risky responses Iranians were willing to give to a host of questions. For instance, nearly four in five Iranians -- including most Ahmadinejad supporters -- said they wanted to change the political system to give them the right to elect Iran's supreme leader, who is not currently subject to popular vote. Similarly, Iranians chose free elections and a free press as their most important priorities for their government, virtually tied with improving the national economy. These were hardly "politically correct" responses to voice publicly in a largely authoritarian society.

Indeed, and consistently among all three of our surveys over the past two years, more than 70 percent of Iranians also expressed support for providing full access to weapons inspectors and a guarantee that Iran will not develop or possess nuclear weapons, in return for outside aid and investment. And 77 percent of Iranians favored normal relations and trade with the United States, another result consistent with our previous findings.

Iranians view their support for a more democratic system, with normal relations with the United States, as consonant with their support for Ahmadinejad. They do not want him to continue his hard-line policies. Rather, Iranians apparently see Ahmadinejad as their toughest negotiator, the person best positioned to bring home a favorable deal -- rather like a Persian Nixon going to China.

Allegations of fraud and electoral manipulation will serve to further isolate Iran and are likely to increase its belligerence and intransigence against the outside world. Before other countries, including the United States, jump to the conclusion that the Iranian presidential elections were fraudulent, with the grave consequences such charges could bring, they should consider all independent information. The fact may simply be that the reelection of President Ahmadinejad is what the Iranian people wanted.

Ken Ballen is president of Terror Free Tomorrow: The Center for Public Opinion, a nonprofit institute that researches attitudes toward extremism. Patrick Doherty is deputy director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. The groups' May 11-20 polling consisted of 1,001 interviews across Iran and had a 3.1 percentage point margin of error.

For more on polling in Iran, read Jon Cohen's Behind the Numbers.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy.../06/14/AR2009061401757.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

 

That article is just a repeat of the study you posted earlier which had several problems that I pointed out earlier.

That article is very very misleading. The (2-1) margin only reflected what they called committed voters with over a fourth polled claiming to be undecided. Additionally, the survey also stated that most of the undecided voters were in favor of major reforms. Also, if every undecided voter went with Ahmadinajad, that total would still be less than what Ahmadinajad ended up getting in this election. Most importantly it doesnt answer the regional discrepencies in voting. (along with many other things) And finally its hard to provide proof that the results were rigged when Iran bans all monitors at its polling sites. Rafsanjani even assembled his own team of monitors that were eventually expelled from polling sites.