Math Is Hard...Iran's Guardian Council Says More People Voted Than Were Eligible In 50 Cities

(Bumped since it came over late last night, more on developments in Iran shortly)

But they aren't sure if the 3 million extra votes really matter given how much of a landslide Ahmadinejad won by.

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.

..."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.

The spokesman, however, said that although the vote tally affected by such an irregularity could be over 3 million and the council could, at the request of the candidates, re-count the affected ballot boxes, "it has yet to be determined whether the possible change in the tally is decisive in the election results," reported Khabaronline.

The link goes to The Corner but the story is from Iran's official English language media outlet. Either someone in the opposition runs the outlet or the regime thinks this shit will sell and calm everyone down.

This would be comical if it didn't have such tragic consequences.

Seriously this kind of shit is enough to make even the most hackish of Chicago pols blush. Speaking of which, has anyone heard from President Soft Serve lately?

More [Gabe]: This is what I was talking about yesterday when I wrote that it's become much more difficult for the typical Iranian to pretend that they're in a free state. Many thuggish regimes rely on the appearance of elections and they punish harshly those who suggest that the elections are anything other than fair--for example, Saddam Hussein's Iraq and L'il Kim's North Korea. The Guardian Council has always maintained that the elections are fair in Iran.

Yesterday's admission of election fraud is going to hit them harder than they expect. One of Mousavi's demands has been for a re-vote. With the Council admitting that the vote was pretty much shit, it's going to be harder to refuse. More than that, a generation of Iranians is never going to trust the word of the Council again.

posted by DrewM. at 09:39 AM

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