In Iran’s recent election,  incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad has claimed victory. I’m sure this wasn’t such an easy feat, considering that his main opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, seemed to have the support of most of the constituencies.

Nothing to fear though. Ahmedinejad had a few tricks to garner enough of the electorate’s support:

Ebrahim Yazdi, ex-foreign minister of Iran, said in an interview:

Do you know that last night the security forces occupied the offices of many newspapers, to make sure that their reporting on the election was favorable? They changed many headlines. They fixed the election.

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There were many, many irregularities. They did not permit the candidates to supervise the election or the counting of the ballots at the polling places. The minister of the interior announced that he would oversee the final count in his office, at the ministry, with only two aides present.

In previous elections, they announced the results in each district, so people could follow up and make a judgment about the validity of the figures. In 2005, there were problems: in one district there were about 100,000 eligible voters, and they announced a total vote of 150,000. This time they didn’t even release information about each particular district.

Three people going to oversee the tally of the millions of votes? Iranian newspapers don’t report any violence?

It seems 500,000 Iranians know better:

These people are still protesting, in the hundreds of thousands, despite many violent crackdowns on the part of Ahmedinejad’s guard. Many have been killed, but protesters march onward. I really feel for these people, but one thing really does scare me, just as much as corrupt government officials – that protesters are going to attribute any victory to Allah, and not their continued efforts.

I’ll spare you from the videos of people being shot.