# Saddam wins in landslide, 11,445,638 to 0; no film at 11, or any other time **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [October 16, 2002, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-wins-in-landslide-11-445-638-to-0-no-film-at-11-or-any-other-time/132504 "2002-10-16T13:43:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![lieu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c2a13f/32.png) [@lieu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lieu)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2002, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-wins-in-landslide-11-445-638-to-0-no-film-at-11-or-any-other-time/132504/61 "2002-10-17T05:31:15Z")
Like a base 10 system is even statistically relevant when gassing of your parents has given you 14 fingers. Give me my banjo and get the fuck out of my face. ---
**Author:** ![vanilla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/f19dbf/32.png) [@vanilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vanilla)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2002, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-wins-in-landslide-11-445-638-to-0-no-film-at-11-or-any-other-time/132504/62 "2002-10-17T13:37:59Z")
What if everyone decided to get together and all vote no? Would he kill his entire country? ---
**Author:** ![flyboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/4da419/32.png) [@flyboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flyboy)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2002, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-wins-in-landslide-11-445-638-to-0-no-film-at-11-or-any-other-time/132504/63 "2002-10-17T14:06:11Z")
I think we’re missing the true intent of the “election.” I don’t think they expect anyone to really believe the results. What they want is to make a show of defiance against the Zionist Americans. From what I’ve seen so far, this goes over very well in the Mid East, and I’m guessing their intent is to draw more support from their Arab neighbors, or at least keep them out of an American coalition. This is good way to do so without their military. ---
**Author:** ![DeadlyAccurate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ac91a4/32.png) [@DeadlyAccurate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DeadlyAccurate)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2002, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-wins-in-landslide-11-445-638-to-0-no-film-at-11-or-any-other-time/132504/64 "2002-10-17T14:13:00Z")
Yeah, I suspect he would, **vanilla**. I think Hussein’s huge ego simply could not bear the mere idea that he would get less than 100% of the popular vote even if it was more realistic to give him say, 92% or something else equally feasible. So 100% it was. I’m sure that in the next “election” he’ll go ahead and let all the people who’ve died vote for him. “They love me so much, they come back from the dead and vote for me.” And he’ll expect people to believe it. > [@](#): > > So let me see if I understand this correctly, the people of Iraq don’t support Saddam Hussein? I don’t see their PR to be any different from our PR saying that America speaks with one voice. **EasyPhil** , you’ve been registered on this board about as long as I have and you haven’t yet learned that there is literally nothing in this world that could get 100% consensus? As others pointed out, you couldn’t get 100% of men to agree that blowjobs are a good thing or that up is up. If someone posted that they saw a man beating up a baby and had him arrested, you would find someone somewhere who would think the poster should’ve minded his own business and that the man had the right to do what he did. [ABCnews](http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/Iraq_referendum021016.html) had an article about the election. The author of the piece interviewed people coming out of the polls (through an Iraqi translator) and they couldn’t find anyone who _said_ they voted negative, even people of whom the author claimed he saw the negative votes. And a poll of the Kurds in northern Iraq, who aren’t under Hussein’s control, showed that 94.5% of them would _not_ have voted him back into power. (Um, I know I didn’t just make that last sentence up, but I can’t find my cite.) ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2002, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-wins-in-landslide-11-445-638-to-0-no-film-at-11-or-any-other-time/132504/65 "2002-10-17T14:14:14Z")
Buckner wrote: > [@](#): > > It’s just a lie, that’s all. That’s exactly what it is. ---
**Author:** ![anya\_marie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ebca7d/32.png) [@anya\_marie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anya_marie)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2002, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-wins-in-landslide-11-445-638-to-0-no-film-at-11-or-any-other-time/132504/66 "2002-10-17T14:56:08Z")
It is a flaming crock of shit, and I still would not believe Iraqis want Saddam as thier leader, How can it be an election with out another candidate? How can you know what the people truly want when the penalty for dissent is death? I daresay you couldn’t get results that were more false if you had to count them with the maggots from Saddam Hussein’s corpse. ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2002, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-wins-in-landslide-11-445-638-to-0-no-film-at-11-or-any-other-time/132504/67 "2002-10-17T15:13:28Z")
As it happens, somebody actually did poll the Kurds. From yesterday’s story. [http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/10/16/iraq.elections.ap/index.html](http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/10/16/iraq.elections.ap/index.html) > [@](#): > > The poll conducted by the Iraqi Institute for Democracy showed 94.5 percent of Iraqi Kurds questioned said they would not vote for Saddam. > > The institute, which is based in the northern Kurdish enclave and calls itself a nonprofit group promoting democracy, said said about 3,000 Kurds were questioned Tuesday as Iraqis went to the polls in the referendum. > > The poll was published Wednesday by the London-based Al Hayat daily, which reported only 64 Kurds said they would vote for Saddam while 129 said they were undecided. [http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/10/16/kurd.opinion/index.html](http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/10/16/kurd.opinion/index.html) > [@](#): > > At a road bridge linking two very different versions of Iraq the atmosphere is very strange, almost surreal. Motorists coming into Iraq say they are being forced to buy car stickers praising the virtues of the Iraqi president in Baghdad. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2002, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-wins-in-landslide-11-445-638-to-0-no-film-at-11-or-any-other-time/132504/68 "2002-10-17T15:35:11Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by MEBuckner \* > **Is it even physically _possible_ to tally the results in the time the Iraqis claim to have tallied them? No.** Actually, it certainly is. Canada runs its federal elections using hand-marked ballots and we know the full results within 12 hours of the polls closing. I don’t remember any election we’ve ever had where they hadn’t finished counting pretty much all the ballots by the next morning. If you have enough volunteers and a good system it’s not that hard. Canada has a much larger population than Iraq, IIRC. The reason this election is ridiculous bullshit is because of the result, not the speed with which it was “counted.” If God Himself returned to Earth and ran for election, He would not get 100% of the entire eligible vote in a real election. It is totally impossible. ---
**Author:** ![Sauron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce7236/32.png) [@Sauron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sauron)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2002, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-wins-in-landslide-11-445-638-to-0-no-film-at-11-or-any-other-time/132504/69 "2002-10-17T16:07:13Z")
Yeah, but RickJay, Canada has (I presume) an intricate technological system set up that lets them count the ballots electronically as they’re fed into a machine. In addition, they can transmit those results to a central location quickly via fiber optics or satellite transmitters. Although it’s certainly within the realm of possibility that some of Iraq is wired enough to be able to do this (primarily Baghdad and the surrounding area), you’d have to convince me that every polling place in the country has sufficient technological resources to pull this off. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2002, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-wins-in-landslide-11-445-638-to-0-no-film-at-11-or-any-other-time/132504/70 "2002-10-17T16:12:08Z")
Kurds. ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2002, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-wins-in-landslide-11-445-638-to-0-no-film-at-11-or-any-other-time/132504/71 "2002-10-18T00:41:54Z")
This article explains a lot about the “election” coverage: [http://www.thenewrepublic.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021028&s=foer102802](http://www.thenewrepublic.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021028&s=foer102802) Apparently Iraq considers foreign journalists to really be spies using journalism as a cover. If Iraq doesn’t approve of the published reports, journalists have been threatened and denied re-entry to Iraq. In one case, an Iranian-born British journalist was tried as a spy behind closed doors and hanged. Also: > [@](#): > > The French documentary filmmaker Joel Soler told me how his minder took him to a hospital, ostensibly to examine the effects of sanctions, but then called in a nurse with a long needle. “He said, ‘Now we’ll do a series of blood tests.’” Soler jumped on the table screaming: “I said, ‘I’m calling my ambassador.’ If I’d been American, forget about it.” ---
**Author:** ![Weirddave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/919ad9/32.png) [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2002, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-wins-in-landslide-11-445-638-to-0-no-film-at-11-or-any-other-time/132504/72 "2002-10-18T03:00:09Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by MEBuckner \* > \*\* > It’s “possible” in about the same way as nearly getting struck by a meteorite on your way back from purchasing the winning Powerball ticket but being saved when your Great-Aunt Thelma from Omaha who you just had a dream about last night and thought was still in Nebraska suddenly runs up and pushes you out of the way, causing you to accidentally fall into a trash dumpster and discover a lost Rembrandt sitting on top of an original manuscript of the Magna Carta. > > \*\* Dude, that’s…uncanny. How long have you been spying on me? ---
**Author:** ![woolly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ebca7d/32.png) [@woolly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/woolly)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2002, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-wins-in-landslide-11-445-638-to-0-no-film-at-11-or-any-other-time/132504/73 "2002-10-18T14:01:44Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Sauron \* > \*\*Yeah, but RickJay, Canada has (I presume) an intricate technological system set up that lets them count the ballots electronically as they’re fed into a machine. In addition, they can transmit those results to a central location quickly via fiber optics or satellite transmitters. > > Although it’s certainly within the realm of possibility that some of Iraq is wired enough to be able to do this (primarily Baghdad and the surrounding area), you’d have to convince me that every polling place in the country has sufficient technological resources to pull this off. \*\* Actually **Sauron** intricate technology isn’t necessary to conduct an election. Australia still hand tallies about 12 million votes, across an area equivalent to the lower 48 and until recently the counts from each polling station were phoned in to a central tally room. Results are typically known within 3-4 hours of poll close. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-wins-in-landslide-11-445-638-to-0-no-film-at-11-or-any-other-time/132504.md?page=3)