# Was the Iranian election stolen? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 21, 2009, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-iranian-election-stolen/500518 "2009-06-21T22:55:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2009, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-iranian-election-stolen/500518/21 "2009-06-22T03:31:28Z")
> [@Gorsnak](#): > > We use paper ballots, count by hand, and typically know election results within 5-6 hours of the polls closing. Where are you? How many votes? How many human tabulators? > [@](#): > > I have no idea about the answer to the OP, but I’ve seen this little tidbit repeated a couple times now and I really don’t know on what grounds anyone could say how long it should take to count the ballots. It depends entirely on how many people you have doing it. There’s no barrier whatsoever to having them counted overnight. Well, there is a finite number of people that were assigned to count the ballots. If your example is any guide, we should be able to divide the number of ballots in your election by the number of tabulators to determine how many would be required in a country the size of Iran. Then, we compare that number of tabulators with the number reported for the Iranian election. If they are wildly divergent, I would say that is an indication of fraud. ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2009, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-iranian-election-stolen/500518/22 "2009-06-22T04:05:41Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > Where are you? How many votes? How many human tabulators? Well, there is a finite number of people that were assigned to count the ballots. If your example is any guide, we should be able to divide the number of ballots in your election by the number of tabulators to determine how many would be required in a country the size of Iran. Then, we compare that number of tabulators with the number reported for the Iranian election. If they are wildly divergent, I would say that is an indication of fraud. How are you going to find out how many tabulators Iran used? According to Elections Canada, in last fall’s general election we had ~14 million votes cast at ~65000 polling stations, which works out to 215 ballots/station on average. I don’t know how many Elections volunteers there are at each station, but as you can see it’s not an overwhelming task to count the ballots, even at polling stations with significantly above average numbers. ---
**Author:** ![Notassmartasithought](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c0e974/32.png) [@Notassmartasithought](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Notassmartasithought)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2009, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-iranian-election-stolen/500518/23 "2009-06-22T04:06:22Z")
The evidence is the actions of the regime. Take down or delay most communications, get rid of foreign reporters, claim the results were divinely inspired, even if they were announced hours before any conclusive counts could have been completed. Then attack non-violent marchers. There are statistical sites, like [358.com](http://358.com), which show the unlikeliness of the results, but even a 1 percent chance can occur, very, very, occasionally. So you have to make your own judgment after you’ve read the the statistical analysis, after you’ve learned how tyrants in the past have manipulated elections, and how you judge the motivations of the actors involved. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2009, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-iranian-election-stolen/500518/24 "2009-06-22T04:09:54Z")
> [@Captain\_Carrot](#): > > There are a bunch of cities with turnout well over 100%. . . The Iranians are really enthusiastic voters? ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2009, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-iranian-election-stolen/500518/25 "2009-06-22T04:21:59Z")
> [@](#): > > Well, was it? What evidence is there? There isn’t any hard evidence either way. How would there be, if it was the government itself who was in on skewing the election and who is in on covering it up? From what I understand this was basically a case of last minute ballot box stuffing (which is why several voting stations are reporting more votes than there are actual registered voters). It’s not like the Iranian’s are putting their raw data out electronically for foreign independent confirmation, ehe? > [@](#): > > I understand that Ahmedinejad won a larger-than-expected victory, but I had thought that Mousavi was an underdog anyway. Yes…though the problem here is, how do you trust the pre-election poll numbers? How were THEY tabulated, exactly? From what representative sample? Before the election (in which they had something like an over 80% turn out, which says something right there), there was a lot of people indicating that Mousavi was in fact running ahead…but, again, it’s not like there is any access to the raw (and independently gathered) data for us to look through, nothing about the methodology used in the polls, etc. > [@](#): > > Are the protestors in the streets fighting against a repressive sham democracy, or are they attempting by force to overturn a democratically-derived result? I think that the protesters are sick of the old system, and that this is was the last straw. Even a sham election gives one the illusion of participation…until them make a sham of the sham, so to speak. So, now the fuse is lit. My guess is this isn’t even about Mousavi or Ahmedinejad anymore, but that’s just a guess. > [@](#): > > In short, what is the evidence for either proposition? No hard evidence one way or the other. It’s all pure speculation, and depends on which blog you have been reading or which you believe. This is what happens when you have a real, honest to Allah repressive regime and a totally opaque election system and process controlled by the government and not open to any kind of independent analysis or checks. You really can steal (or manipulate) an election at will and no one can really know the facts when you have such a set up. -XT ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2009, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-iranian-election-stolen/500518/26 "2009-06-22T04:22:29Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I love having a stalker. 🆒 Nah, it’s just a statistical clump, well within expected deviation. > [@](#): > > I gave the GQ answer. No, you didn’t. You didn’t give an answer to the OP’s question. The OP asked “What is the evidence for each claim?” You answered the question “Was the election stolen?” Granted, the question you answered was contained in the title of the OP. But one who had read the _body_ of the OP would have understood that the OP’s title was misleading. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2009, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-iranian-election-stolen/500518/27 "2009-06-22T06:23:26Z")
Man, are they ever in a rotten spot of bother. I gather a very large part of the population of Iran are tired of rigorously Islamic rule. But their parents generation was so sick of the Shah, they went to the opposite extreme, and instituted a constitution with checks and balances only between the clerics and the clerics. A Supreme Leader with enough Executive Privilege to give Karl Rove midnight wood. An election council that assures that the ballot will be a contest between the very, very conservative party and the totally authoritarian party. It would be like having a choice between “Batshit” Bachmann and Sarah, Gomer Palin’s evil twin. In trying to erase any taint of the Shah’s rule, they made any sort of change nearly impossible as far as legal, political means are concerned. And the worst of it is it was pretty darned democratic, they royally screwed every pooch in the pound, its the _mullah’s_ country and everybody else just lives there. And that’s the system they voted for, they locked themselves in, threw the key outside and nailed their feet to the floor for good measure. Which seems to mean that legal and peaceable means of progress are useless. Its very nearly impossible for me to advocate violent revoution, thats worse than throwing out the baby with the bathwater, that’s boiling the baby in the bathwater. About the only thing that could help is if everybody peers into that abyss, shits themselves, and a wild, raging flood of sanity breaks out across the nation, the powerful compromise away their autocracy in the name of reason and common sense. Who does one pray to for a miracle like that? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2009, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-iranian-election-stolen/500518/28 "2009-06-22T06:54:51Z")
> [@Gorsnak](#): > > How are you going to find out how many tabulators Iran used? > > According to Elections Canada, in last fall’s general election we had ~14 million votes cast at ~65000 polling stations, which works out to 215 ballots/station on average. I don’t know how many Elections volunteers there are at each station, but as you can see it’s not an overwhelming task to count the ballots, even at polling stations with significantly above average numbers. It looks like this election got its votes counted a lot faster than the last one. From [here.](http://news.aol.com/article/iranian-election/487713) > [@](#): > > The tallies from previous elections — time-consuming paper ballots — began to trickle in hours after polls closed. This time, huge chunks of results — millions at a time — poured in almost immediately from a huge turnout of about 85 percent of Iran’s 46.2 million voters. The final outcome: 62.6 percent of the vote to Ahmadinejad and 33.75 for Mousavi, a former prime minister from the 1980s. ---
**Author:** ![Notassmartasithought](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c0e974/32.png) [@Notassmartasithought](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Notassmartasithought)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2009, 7:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-iranian-election-stolen/500518/29 "2009-06-22T07:55:01Z")
You know, at the end of the day, the notion that this election was not hijacked is the intellectual equivalent (not yet the moral equivalent) of denying the Holocaust, or that 2 plus 2 equals 4. The way one argues about it determines whether it is the former, or the latter. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2009, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-iranian-election-stolen/500518/30 "2009-06-22T11:32:02Z")
Iran’s state media is now [admitting widespread ballot box stuffing](http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=98711§ionid=351020101): > [@](#): > > Iran’s Guardian Council has suggested that the number of votes collected in 50 cities surpass the number of people eligible to cast ballot in those areas. > > The council’s Spokesman Abbas-Ali Kadkhodaei, who was speaking on the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) Channel 2 on Sunday, made the remarks in response to complaints filed by Mohsen Rezaei – a defeated candidate in the June 12 Presidential election. > > “Statistics provided by the candidates, who claim more than 100% of those eligible have cast their ballot in 80-170 cities are not accurate – the incident has happened in only 50 cities,” Kadkhodaei said. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2009, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-iranian-election-stolen/500518/31 "2009-06-22T14:45:38Z")
ACORN. Gotta be. Fraudulent registrations, phony votes. Yep, ACORN. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2009, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-iranian-election-stolen/500518/32 "2009-06-22T14:57:25Z")
Only 50 cities. So, it was dishonest, but not as dishonest as you all thought. Now everybody can put down the rocks and go home… Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to pacify 'em. ---
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2009, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-iranian-election-stolen/500518/33 "2009-06-22T15:59:51Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > The Iranians are really enthusiastic voters? There’s more Chicagoian Iranians than anyone suspected? -Joe ---
**Author:** ![Lantern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d26b3c/32.png) [@Lantern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lantern)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2009, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-iranian-election-stolen/500518/34 "2009-06-22T17:55:53Z")
A long [post](http://www.juancole.com/2009/06/chatham-house-study-definitively-shows.html)by Juan Cole about a detailed study on the Iranian election by Chatham House: a leading British think tank, which finds strong evidence of electoral fraud. Here is the executive summary of the study: > [@](#): > > Working from the province by province breakdowns of the 2009 and 2005 > results, released by the Iranian Ministry of Interior on the Farsi pages of their > website shortly after the election, and from the 2006 census as published by > the official Statistical Centre of Iran, the following observations about the > official data and the debates surrounding it can be made. > · In two conservative provinces, Mazandaran and Yazd, a turnout of > more than 100% was recorded. > · If Ahmadinejad’s victory was primarily caused by the increase in voter > turnout, one would expect the data to show that the provinces where > there was the greatest ‘swing’ in support towards Ahmadinejad would > also be the provinces with the greatest increase in voter turnout. This > is not the case. > · In a third of all provinces, the official results would require that > Ahmadinejad took not only all former conservative voters, all former > centrist voters, and all new voters, but also up to 44% of former > reformist voters, despite a decade of conflict between these two > groups. > · In 2005, as in 2001 and 1997, conservative candidates, and > Ahmadinejad in particular, were markedly unpopular in rural areas. > That the countryside always votes conservative is a myth. The claim > that this year Ahmadinejad swept the board in more rural provinces > flies in the face of these trends. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2009, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-iranian-election-stolen/500518/35 "2009-06-22T18:02:15Z")
> [@Merijeek](#): > > There’s more Chicagoian Iranians than anyone suspected? > > -Joe In 1880, there was a race for Sheriff in Pima County, Arizona. Ike Clanton and Johnny Ringo of OK Corral fame were district elections officials of a district that had 50 eligible voters. The district went 103-1 for the Democratic candidate, making him Sheriff. So Tombstone has Chicago beat. ---
**Author:** ![JonathanTheRed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/8491ac/32.png) [@JonathanTheRed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JonathanTheRed)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2009, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-iranian-election-stolen/500518/36 "2009-06-22T18:18:09Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I have watched and read a great deal on the subject over the last week or so. Every bit of it has been pure speculation. There are no numbers. There is nothing I would call evidence. We know nothing about what really happened. I said you would get other answers in GD. I didn’t say they would be good answers. I’m not sure I’d say that this isn’t a “good answer”. It’s honest, at the very least. And to “what evidence do we have either way?”, “none whatsoever” is a perfectly legitimate answer. But it is contradicted by others here who claim to have evidence. > [@](#): > > I find it hard to imagine we will ever have evidence. This strikes me as overly pessimistic. Iran isn’t North Korea, and information does get in and out. Will we ever have _proof_ of what happened? Possibly not. Will we ever have _evidence_? Surely at least _some_ reliable information will get out. > [@ChrisBooth12](#): > > Requested cite: > [http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2009/jun/17/iran-uprising](http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2009/jun/17/iran-uprising) Read 11am Interesting, but as even it says, the report was completely unconfirmed. In times like these, speculation and rumor fly rampant, and something as serious as this should have a little more to back it up. Surely if this guy really _did_ publish “real” numbers and if he really _were_ murdered, there will be more than “unconfirmed reports” sooner rather than later. By the way, guys, as this is my first foray into GD (unintended, yet), I should add: I am not defending the Iranian regime, and to a certain extent I’m engaged in devil’s advocacy. I’m not a fan of repressive regimes of any nature, and certainly not ones in which the repression is founded on religion. However, I value truth above all else and I’m seeing a lot of people willing to believe that the election was stolen based on rather flimsy evidence. > [@Sitnam](#): > > -According to law Ali Khamenei must wait three days to announce the election results, he waited one day. Cite, please? > [@](#): > > -For the first time in Iran’s 30 year history the government has a questionable mandate from the people. If Ali Khamenei and the government sincerely believe the elections were fair, why not have another? Perhaps Iran’s constitution lays out the rules for elections, and (like ours) has no provision for “do-overs”? > [@elucidator](#): > > On \*Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me \*(NPR, you rube noob) I may be a rube noob, but as a believer in a free and independent press I rarely listen to state-owned media. > [@MandaJo](#): > > It seems to me that fixing an election doesn’t have to be a huge conspiracy, if it is fixed by lots of little people doing what they understand they are supposed to do (“Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?”). Here’s the problem I have with theories of stolen elections. I don’t know how the electoral system works in Iran but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to assume that it shares similarities with the American system and in fact _any_ voting system in a large democracy. In a nation of millions of voters, you simply can’t have all the ballots go through a single bottleneck. Instead, elections are conducted at a precinct level, with the totals for each precinct being tabulated and forwarded to higher authorities for aggregation. These precinct-level totals are published, and the correct values for each precinct are known to _several_ people at each precinct, including (in the U.S, at least) poll-watchers representing both parties. The only way for the higher authorities to rig the election would be for them to publish false precinct-level totals, and the folks at the precinct would be in a position to notice. It’s a difficult system to game. Corrupt precinct-level officials can report erroneous results, but they can only marginally affect the overall outcome. Corrupt state-level officials can report erroneous totals, but this could be easily caught. Corrupting a national election would require a lot of conspirators. Which isn’t to say it can’t happen… or that it isn’t much easier to rig local elections. But I’m highly skeptical and would require solid proof to believe it. > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > How do you know they didn’t ? In case you haven’t noticed, if they were trying to fool the Iranian people, they did a poor job of it. It’s certainly the case that a lot of Iranian people believe that they were cheated. But the fact that a large number of people _believe_ a proposition has little correlation to its truth. A nationwide vote-fixing conspiracy would leave numerous people in possession of documentary evidence. > [@](#): > > Ah, the Lancet study. Which used the standard methods that are used everywhere, but which magically became invalid when applied to Iraq. In the [aforementioned blog post](http://politicalities.typepad.com/politicalities/2004/12/abrogation_of_d.html) [note: blog has been abandoned for years], I pointed out numerous flaws with the study’s methodology… but even if their methodology were _flawless_ and none of the potential sources of bias I pointed out were valid, a close look at their data show that it reveals a mean number of deaths of 98,000… _plus or minus 92%_. Yeah, their 95% confidence interval covered a whopping 92%. That is, in a word, bullshit. That’s not a statistical estimate, that’s a wild-ass guess. The fact that the study was reported widely in the media with headlines such as “Study puts civilian toll in Iraq at over 100,000” and “100,000 Civilian Deaths Estimated in Iraq” reveals the political motivation behind this perversion of academia, and I repeat that the editors of _The Lancet_ ought to be ashamed of themselves for publishing. > [@](#): > > There’s no such thing as free will. You are mistaken, but that’s okay. You have free will whether you believe it or not. > [@](#): > > And your argument is a non-sequitur since the accusation is that this WASN’T free and fair. How then is my argument a non sequitur? The fact is that _any_ outcome of an election is not inconsistent with the possible outcomes of a free and fair election. > [@](#): > > A “reliable source” being one that agrees with you and says there was no tampering with the election, no doubt. Jerk that knee much? > [@](#): > > It’s pretty clear you are of the “don’t confuse me with the facts” persuasion, and not just about Iran. I’m still waiting to hear “the facts”; I will judge after I do whether they confuse me. > [@Notassmartasithought](#): > > You know, at the end of the day, the notion that this election was not hijacked is the intellectual equivalent (not yet the moral equivalent) of denying the Holocaust, or that 2 plus 2 equals 4. The way one argues about it determines whether it is the former, or the latter. Pardon me for wanting evidence before joining those who believe in overthrowing the announced result of an allegedly democratic election. For the record, having lost relatives during the Holocaust I do not deny it, and as for whethe 2 plus 2 equals 4, it depends on exactly what you mean by “2”, “plus”, “equals”, and “4”. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2009, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-iranian-election-stolen/500518/37 "2009-06-22T18:33:48Z")
> [@JonathanTheRed](#): > > …I may be a rube noob, but as a believer in a free and independent press I rarely listen to state-owned media… Have you heard about our outreach program for the humor-impaired? ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2009, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-iranian-election-stolen/500518/38 "2009-06-22T18:53:54Z")
> [@Sitnam](#): > > -According to law Ali Khamenei must wait three days to announce the election results, he waited one day. > [@JonathanTheRed](#): > > Cite, please? You can find it repeated all over the place but for starters: > [@](#): > > The Electoral Commission is supposed to wait three days before certifying the results of the election, at which point they are to inform Khamenei of the results, and he signs off on the process. The three-day delay is intended to allow charges of irregularities to be adjudicated. In this case, Khamenei immediately approved the alleged results. > > SOURCE: [http://www.truthout.org/061409Z](http://www.truthout.org/061409Z) > [@](#): > > Perhaps Iran’s constitution lays out the rules for elections, and (like ours) has no provision for “do-overs”? Well, they have provisions to do run-off elections (happened last time). > [@](#): > > I may be a rube noob, but as a believer in a free and independent press I rarely listen to state-owned media. Err…was meant in jest (as noted). I sincerely hope this answer is in jest too. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Carrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@Captain\_Carrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Carrot)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2009, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-iranian-election-stolen/500518/39 "2009-06-22T19:07:55Z")
> [@JonathanTheRed](#): > > I may be a rube noob, but as a believer in a free and independent press I rarely listen to state-owned media. So then you shouldn’t believe any claims that come from the Iranian press and broadcast services. > [@JonathanTheRed](#): > > Here’s the problem I have with theories of stolen elections. I don’t know how the electoral system works in Iran but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to assume that it shares similarities with the American system and in fact _any_ voting system in a large democracy. And yet, that is unreasonable. In Iran there is one agency counting votes: the state. Candidates may have watchers at the polls, or they may have that privilege refused for any reason or none at all. In short, it is equally easy for Ayatollah Khameini’s minions at the Ministry of Elections to give Ahmadinejad 10 million more votes as 10 more. [Cite](http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/06/ayatollahs-flawed-logic.html). > [@JonathanTheRed](#): > > How then is my argument a non sequitur? The fact is that _any_ outcome of an election is not inconsistent with the possible outcomes of a free and fair election. That’s both completely false and absurd. If you have more votes than voters, that is completely inconsistent with any outcome of a fair election. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2009, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-iranian-election-stolen/500518/40 "2009-06-22T19:22:12Z")
Thanks **Whack-a-Mole** , my Google-fu has failed me today. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-iranian-election-stolen/500518.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-iranian-election-stolen/500518.md?page=3)