"Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad's main political rival, is ineligible to run in 2009 as he will be over 75."
Do we have a citation for this? Chapter IX section 1 of the Iranian Constitution does not mention any age restrictions. Do we have a citation for the applicable Iranian federal law on this? Is this covered by the law or is address by Article 99 in the Constitution? Throckmorton Guildersleeve (talk) 23:56, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
I realize that there may be differences in Romanization of Iranian names, but there is a candidate spelled "Mohsen Rezaei" (in the article text) and "Mohsen Rezaee" (in the graphic). I don't know enough to say which is preferable, but there should be consistency. Grassfire (talk) 05:00, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
Article is a major joke / pre-election poll section
Poll section states that: "Mir-Hossein Mousavi would take 52% of Iranian workers' votes in the election, defeating Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with 36% and Mehdi Karroubi with 8%"
Workers can't defeat because they are not the only one that are voting. As of Today, all major polls suggest Ahmadinejad leading in the polls.[3] Even reformist own survey by Karoubi's camp admit this![4]
The fact that you don't like it does not mean you should fabricate your own version of reality.
i think i've got most of these into the table. None of these polls have sufficient detail to be anywhere near a level of "verifiability" by people living in Iran - e.g. judging the validity of the basic method (demographic profile + statistical analysis), the independence or dependence of the polling institute, concrete polling method (people in street, random fixed telephone numbers, random mobile telephone numbers, sufficient spread across demographic groups by age/sex/ethnicity/wealth/city-vs-country/etc.), though a few do give a few details. Boud (talk) 22:13, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
old text version, replaced by table
i've replaced the following text that contains original research - making generalisations way beyond just summarising (who considers the polls to be "not unbiased"? who decides which polls should be taken with skepticism? why isn't "government" indicated as the organisation that organised a poll called "other"?), without any references - by a table. For convenience, in case anyone is worried, the text i removed is here: Boud (talk) 21:44, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
The polls in Iran are not considered unbiased and results depend heavily on the polling organization. For example, according to a poll conducted in late March 2009, Mir-Hossein Mousavi would take 52% of Iranian workers' votes in the election, defeating Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with 36% and Mehdi Karroubi with 8%.[1] Reformist polls like this which state that Mousavi is front runner are taken between groups more leaned toward reformists and should be considered with skepticism. In an other poll[2] by reformists in Tehran (which is one of the least conservative cities) Mousavi got 43.54% of the vote, while Ahmadinejad got some 41.26%. Other polls [3] show that Ahmadinejad has more votes than Mousavi and Karroubi have together.
I have put that sentence. I think it is obvious from the variance in the results that the polls are not reliable. I would suggest you to take a look at sites like PEW's website people-press.org and pollster.com to understand how a poll should be reported to be considered reliable. I have also added a reference about this to a letter by a number of reformists including Abbas Abdi. 128.100.5.138 (talk) 00:38, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
If it's obvious from the variance in the table that at least some of the polls are unreliable, then isn't it enough to let the reader decide what is "obvious" him/herself? Otherwise, we're not adding any useful information.
IMHO, adding this text helps the reader. Anyone comparing the polls can see the variance but I am not sure how many of readers would do that. Also noting that the polling organizations are not stated nor the methodology is helpful to understand the difference of these polls compared to much more respected polls in developed countries. 128.100.5.135 (talk) 22:06, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
i'm quite aware that a poll report that does not state anything at all about the method, does not identify the organization, and does not even state how many people were interviewed, is quite unscientific in the sense that it's impossible to reproduce or refute (except to some degree by making other polls). That's why there are columns for these things in the table. To the limited degree to which various organizations/political groups/government wish to make claims of polls, let them at least give out key information so that other people can judge their possible validity. The polls carried out in N number of cities presumably interviewed a bunch (10?) people in each city, giving at least some minimum hint as to what the reliability might be. This sort of presentation also allows the reader to judge the vagueness of the reports quite concretely. This in itself is useful information.
Someone reading the table would in my opinion regard these information as extra information, not missing required information from the report. As there most (if not all) of referenced poll are missing these key information, I think that this should be explicitly told. 128.100.5.135 (talk) 22:06, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
i'll presume that fluent Persian wikipedians can check the usefulness of the reference, in the absence of a decent English language reference. Boud (talk) 14:45, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
I am fluent in Persian. It would be nice to have the references verified by some other fluent speaker. Please read the references and put to a note here for verification. 128.100.5.135 (talk) 22:06, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
pre-election polls
pre-election poll table
precision better than 1% probably unreasonable: Unless someone can find the numbers of people polled, the safest is to assume they're of the same order of magnitude in typical opinion polls anywhere in the world, i.e. something like 1000 people. That puts a minimum uncertainty of about 3%, so quoting to more precision than 1% is unreasonable unless we're sure that a poll was of 10,000 rather than 1000 people. Boud (talk) 21:44, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
better sourcing: People who can read Persian better than i can (easy!) could replace some of the "?" in the table. What would be best to overcome any discussion about "who is biased" would be to start wikipedia pages on any relevant polling organisations. The reader will then be able to decide if the polling organisation is left-biased, right-biased, anarchist-biased, hierarchy-biased, religious-biased, or run behind-the-scenes from Washington D.C. through the USA funded governmental non-government organisations intended to control democracies around the world - the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute (same acronym as Islamic Republic of Iran, IRI!), the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and the American Center for International Labor Solidarity. The reader can go to the individual wikipedia article describing the polling organisation and that article which will independently go through the WP:NPOV and WP:OR processes. This way we just list the NPOV facts and the reader interprets them how s/he wishes to. Boud (talk) 21:44, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
The problem is Government polls are usually classified and are not available to the general public, other reported polls do not even state the polling organization! So all you have is just where the poll is reported. Also note that taking an opinion poll can be considered a serious crime in Iran, an organization took a pool about relations with US (for Iran's parliament during Khatami's second term!), and as far as I remember, some of them received prison sentences for doing this. 128.100.5.138 (talk) 00:45, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
Can you find a reference for the claim that "an opinion poll can be considered a serious crime in Iran, an organization took a pool about relations with US (for Iran's parliament during Khatami's second term!), and as far as I remember, some of them received prison sentences for doing this."? The main claim should probably go in another article, e.g. opinion poll, as a section like legality of opinion polling and content starting something like Carrying out opinion polls has varying legal status in different countries. In Iran, etc.. i would be a bit worried about putting too many persian-language references only in the English article - the reasonable thing to do IMHO would be to put them in both the fa. and en. versions of the article, to make sure that people fluent in the language can judge the validity of the citation. Remember that the more NPOV/RS/NOR facts we have in the wikipedias, both en. and fa., the more likely it is that the local and international circulation of facts that are credible and relatively testable will force whoever wins the election to face up to those facts. Or to put it another way: 97% (my speculation, not a fact :) of people who read these wikipedia pages will just read the "article" and not read the discussion page. Boud (talk) 15:22, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
i've added them, but i'll need some help. For tabnak, i've assumed that the gray, horizontal bar graph is for a national survey. Question 1: does the number 18391 mean 18,391 people surveyed (the phrase to the right seems to be "whole of Iran")? This says nothing about systematic error, but it does say something about random error. Boud (talk) 20:47, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
Thank you for putting them. Q1: yes. Note: The poll you have put in the table is about who you will *NOT* vote for! There are three poll on this page. I am putting the numbers here: 128.100.5.135 (talk) 23:08, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
Aftab News's Poll: (who you will NOT vote for?) total 18391, Ahmadinejad %62, Mousavi %28, Karroubi %7, Rezaie %4
Rahbord Danesh's Poll: The graph shows their recent polls, the same colors represent candidates (Mousavi green, ...) black is other (which includes Khatami before he dropped out) each horizontal line is %5, the lower axis is dates, but it is hard to read them: 87/12/6, 87/12/15, 88/1/1, 88/1/15, 88/1/26, 88/2/15, 88/2/26, 88/3/5, 88/3/10. The poll is interesting because it includes Khatami votes before he drop out (the only major other candidate). I do not think we need to put all of them. The last one is for 88/3/10 Iranian Calender: Mousavi %36.6, Ahmadinejad %32.1, Rezaie %26.6, Karroubi %5.7. Note: Tabnak is news site of supporters of Rezaie.
A reasonably objective choice i suggest is about once a month from this data set. Since i've put in 88/3/10, i'll add 88/2/15, 88/1/15, 87/12/15. Any later polls can be more frequent. Boud (talk) 16:19, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
Tabnak Qn 2: the numbers in the sentences above would give [28086 25454 21227 2291] / 77058 = [36% 33% 28% 3%] for [Ahm Mas Karr Rez] respectively. This seems to match the coloured poll evolution graph below (rant: why do the website publishers show a scan instead of a digital version of the figure itself? the scan is virtually unreadable. did they photograph a tv set?), except that Rezaei in the coloured poll evolution graph is about 7%, not 3%. Are these two polls for Tehran? i couldn't find the word Tehran except in the comments below, but i guess the text says something like "greater metropolitan area of the capital city"... For the moment i haven't used this info since i'm only guessing. Boud (talk) 20:47, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
I think I have answered it above. I don't know why they have published a scan, probably they have got a paper copy of it. 128.100.5.135 (talk) 23:08, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
Rayemelat: both the Rayemelat polls cited seem quite clearly to be for Tehran - i've put this in the table. The various polls in the table look a bit less wildly discrepant now, except for the YJC and Etemad-e-Melli polls, which only give rankings, and put Karroubi ahead of Mousavi. Boud (talk) 21:27, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
Etemad Melli is Karroubi's newspaper. They were trying to convince other reformists that Karroubi has a chance of winning the election and should not be forced to drop out and support Mousavi. 128.100.5.135 (talk) 23:08, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
rajanews/press tv
Just a comment comparing the numerical data to text discussion in the press tv articles for the two Rajanews entries - the numbers (at least between these two dates/surveys) show Ahmadinejad support dropping and Mousavi support growing, but the text of the articles says the opposite. This is a situation where good referencing becomes ever more important, and where ordinary citizens can more easily "remember the past" and override misleading claims by politicians/newspapers/other individuals-or-organisations... i've webcitation.org'ed both of these, so that if either press tv has a web problem or changes their articles post-publication, then readers will be able to compare the original and new versions. Boud (talk) 21:49, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
i'm putting back "pre-election" in the subsection title. Please see wiktionary:poll - the first meaning is:
"An election or a survey of a particular group."
and the adult population of Iran is clearly "a particular group". Whether or not a page like "opinion polling for the United States presidential election, 2008" could be named more clearly should probably decided at that article, not here. But that title (i haven't actually checked it) is ambiguous, since the election itself is certainly a wiktionary:poll, even if the term "opinion poll" tends to mean small polls of about 1000 people or so. Boud (talk) 14:52, 27 May 2009 (UTC) modified Boud (talk) 15:01, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
I would suggest you to also take a look at the page for election wikipedia:election. I agree that the an election can be considered a poll, but opinion polls it what is usually used for the polls we are talking about. take a look also at opinion poll which is exactly what we mean: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polls. Also pre-election poll is misleading because it can mean to poll taken just before election in contrast to post election, polls taken from voters during the election, polls taken a long time before election. If you check the page for opinion poll, you will see that election is not an opinion poll, so it is completely clear. I think we should keep with the name that is used for all other similar poll in other countries. I am changing it back to opinion poll. 128.100.5.135 (talk) 22:48, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
opinion polls table style/colours
Okay, so I've done some very basic work on the table to try to make it more presentable and wiki-friendly. Removing the question marks and excess cells. I agree that editors should seek out other election articles to see how it could be done here. I appreciate that "the election is itself a poll" but "Opinion polls" is in usage all across Wikipedia and I also see no reason for this article to be unique in this respect. Additionally, if users want to use different colors for different parties, we could. While Mousavi doesn't have a party, his campaign has consistently used a shade of dark green.--Patrick«»17:00, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
Patrik, can you change the colors of other candidates to following: Karroubi (White is the color they are using, their TV color is Yellow), Ahmadinejad (Red which is his TV color), Rezaie (Blue which is his TV color), I don't know how to do it. It would also be nice to have links to TV ads and debates. The files are available on some Persian sites which require registration. One exception is the following site which has the first TV adds: www.alef.ir 128.100.5.135 (talk) 23:51, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
Patrick - nice work :) - that was my first mediawiki syntax table btw.
User 128.100.5.135: see what you think of my try with colours. For Mousavi, #0b4033 is my estimate of the dark green from the left/right bands of http://mirhussein.com/ . i couldn't find web examples of the other candidates' colours, so i just used those that you stated in words. i've tried to follow the convention that the leading candidate according to a given poll has that cell of the table darker. Patrick can probably help if you're unhappy with this and can't see how to edit yourself - some hints are at meta:Help:Table. Boud (talk) 21:33, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
Boud, I think they are nice. Well done. :) Can you put the same colors on top of the page (top right corner), under the pictures for candidates? 128.100.5.135 (talk) 02:22, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
Someone removed the section on the role of turnout (how many people vote), stating Pre-election opinion polls: vague and biased statements removed, also not related to pre-election polls). Turnout can frequently have an important role in election results, because different demographic groups have different tendencies in voting (AFAIR, a high turnout favored Obama in the 2008 USA presidential election and a low turnout would have favored McCain). The reference here is indirect, but Der Standard and the BBC are risking their reputations by making these sorts of statements, and at least for the moment, they (or at least the BBC) tends to be considered a reliable source in the en.wikipedia. Whether or not the claim is biased is irrelevant from a wikipedia point of view - see WP:NPOV. If you can find some analysts (preferably not so anonymous) with unbiased or differently biased opinions, please add them. Boud (talk) 15:10, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
I removed that paragraph. Turnout can have an effect on the result, but the statement are completely irrelevant to polls here. We can put it in some other section. One should have a poll that asks people undecided about voting or decided that they will not vote about who they would prefer to be able to related the turn out to polls. When anonymous analyst is reported to say something, it does not mean that the reporting organization is also supporting the claim. It is a method to report something without any responsibility. A politician can say something anonymously so the media will report it to manipulate the public opinion. Here, IMO, the analyst is doing this, and therefore biased. I don't think stating an anonymous source is good referencing. I put the text that I removed here:
According to Der Standard and the BBC, anonymous analysts have stated that Mousavi's chances of beating Ahmadinejad are directly correlated with turnout, and that Ahmadinejad seemed to become increasingly defensive as the date of the election came nearer. The anonymous analysts claimed that with a turnout of 60% or more, Ahmadinejad had no chance of being reelected,[4] while a high turnout would favor Mousavi. [5]
introduction/lead section
See Wikipedia:Lead section for a discussion of what should go in the introductory paragraphs, called the "lead section". In case it's not obvious: The lead should be able to stand alone as a concise overview of the article. In other words, claims of facts that are contradictory to sections in the main body of the article should not be present, even if they have references. The main work to WP:NPOV/WP:NOR/WP:RS-ise those facts should be in the relevant sections. Then a summary should go back to the lead.
For this reason, i'm removing:
and leading in the polls by a "healthy" margin.[6]
The closest the Newsweek article gets to the "Opinion polls" section is this extremely vague statement: "Less than a month before balloting starts, all the polls give a healthy edge to the hardline incumbent." It doesn't give either the number of cities involved in polling, the names of the polling organisations, any constraints on the dates apart from "a month before" the election, nor even any specific figures. A useful sidenote for people who claim that Newsweek is a WP:RS: in this case, Newsweek is much more vague than any of the Iranian sources we have cited. Whatever biases are present in the sources we have at the moment, they're at least better (less worse!) than "Less than a month before balloting starts, all the polls give a healthy edge to the hardline incumbent."
Given the present content of the "Opinion polls" section, IMHO it is impossible to put any statement of who is the leading candidate in the lead section. About the only thing that all the polls agree on is that Rezaei is widely expected to lose. Apart from that, we could put something that more or less says nothing serious is known. Boud (talk) 20:42, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
I have read in many Persian blog's, including reformists, that Ahmadinejad was ahead with a large margin, but some polls are showing that Mousavi is closing the gap. Specially the polling organization Ray e Mellat's polls (which are taken each week in Tehran) show that Mousavi is ahead in Tehran, and the gap is growing. In Iran's presidential elections, a candidate have to win majority (half+1) of the votes to be elected in the first run, otherwise, two top candidates will go to the second run. Some of reformists use this to argue that having two reformists will make it harder for Ahmadinejad to win majority of the votes in the first run. I can try to find a few references for this if I find some free time and you need them. 128.100.5.135 (talk) 02:56, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
Also under "relative emphasis" from the lead section guide: Significant information should not appear in the lead if it is not covered in the remainder of the article, although specific facts, such as birthdates, titles, or scientific designations will often appear in the lead only, as may certain quotations. ...Boud (talk) 21:38, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
This Associated Press article discussing the reformists' claims on the role of turnout refers to Mousavi's Karroubi's "campaign manager, Gholam Hossein Karbaschi". However, Mir-Hossein Mousavi presidential campaign, 2009 (infobox) says that "Dr Alireza Beheshty" is a/the campaign manager. This is not necessarily a conflict, since it could be possible to have several campaign managers - i'm sure any politician must have many advisers and give them various titles depending on... political needs/perceptions On the other hand, the ex-mayor of Tehran Gholamhossein Karbaschi has what is presumably the same name and sounds like a Mousavi Karroubi supporter, whom AP could decide to refer to loosely as a campaign manager, whether or not he has that formal title/position or not.
If the person who made the statement is most likely Gholamhossein Karbaschi, then we should put in his name as a wikipedia link, and replace "Mousavi's Karroubi campaign manager" by whatever is a more accurate description, e.g. "Prominent Mousavi Karroubi supporter". Boud (talk) 21:07, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
What a mess (mine)! In fact, the AP article says that Gholamhossein Karbaschi is Karroubi's campaign manager, not Mousavi's. This is consistent with the endorsement stated in the NYT article. The questions remain as to whether this is the same person in the two cases, and whether or not "campaign manager" is a correct description of his role. Boud (talk)
I propose cleaning up this talk page. A lot of information is repeated more than once. We can divide the page into sections and subsections. I suggest these sections:
I will wait one more day and if there is no objection, I will create the sections above and move related parts to those section (without erasing or modifying any text.) 128.100.5.139 (talk) 03:35, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
For the second phase I will move related subsections in each section to follow each other (if no body objects). Any objections? 128.100.5.131 (talk) 03:06, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
The third phase would be cleaning up the repeated information and archive those parts where the discussion has ended (again, if no body objects). 128.100.5.131 (talk) 03:06, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
Bias
I can not see the Analysis section of the article. What is happening here? Article is becoming more and more biased.
Vandalism
Those results shown at the top of the page on the right with the 4 candidates can't be right. They show Mousavi winning. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.195.0.117 (talk) 22:30, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
I've fixed it. Those were the supposed "true" results being circulated in a letter supposedly sent by a government minister to the Khamenei. Although there are reasons to suspect fraud, I think the "official" results ought to remain listed unless a Talk page consensus decides otherwise. The body of the article makes clear that these results are disputed and the reasons/analysis for disputing them. If there was fraud, that doesn't necessarily mean that the results of the letter are legitimate. For example, the unlikelihood of such a quick count would apply to the numbers in that letter as well. --JamesAM (talk) 22:59, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
Someone has changed it again. Please stop this. A number of people continue to change it back to the numbers in the letter, without any discussion, this is more than three times and the last ones are from IP addresses with no other edits: 206.116.157.193 (three times) 24.87.71.160 68.147.208.14 81.105.115.3. I propose semi-locking the that part. 128.100.5.129 (talk) 00:49, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
Once more by user named Psa21, again with no other contribution. I think the semi-protection should be applied to stop this vandalism. 128.100.5.129 (talk) 02:22, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
The page has been locked and this is preventing likes of me to keep it updated. Though I understand the problem of vanadalism but it is also coming from the members too. Take the example of User:Billebrooks who erased a valueable information complete with concrete link (written by a veteran diplomat in one of the most respectable journals ) attached because of his/her own policitical views. That is a shame. I am adding the source here, so that everybody can verify that make it better and add it to the body of the Analysis in the article where it originally was until the above mentioned user deleted it, without any body else taking notice. Being a member does not guarantee less indulgence in vandalism. Checkout.
ADMINS TAKE NOTICE.
" Analysts also point to the fact that Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani an influential and wealthy business tycoon despises Ahmadinejad who happens to have become immensely popular to point that the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei seems to be taking order from him [7] and this added to their older rivalries stretching back to previous election and even before that essentially means the current election seems to being fought between Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad.[8] Furthering this and taking into account the frictions between Rafsanjani and Khamenei, it is said that the demonstrations of wealthy and young "Gucci crowds" mobilized by the huge pockets of influence put in place by Rafsanjani are inconsequential as the majority of the country who are poor support Ahmadinejad.[8] "
Title of this page
Almost all of this page is about the disputes of this election, should the title have the word controversy in it? Christopher Hitchens has called to stop using the word Election entirely [8] - leaving the title simply as "election" introduces a slight bias.
IMHO, the title is good. It is part of series. Again, IMHO, if there are too much fraud and analysis in this article, they should be moved to a new article with the title you proposed, not vice versa. 128.100.5.131 (talk) 01:39, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
i suggest that people keep an eye on this and probably it should remain unchanged (except for my point below on this edit), until there are reasonably NPOV results - probably wikipedia guidelines for election pages should be followed. In any case, frequent changes of the intro make it difficult for people to edit sections in parallel, and tend to be made without first putting the material in the main body of an article... Boud (talk)
We should make reference to the international reaction - certainly the use of web 2.0 to connect with Iranians on the street. --Xpetrol (talk) 06:09, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
English sources
I see several sources are in Farsi (Persian), but why not use English sources, so that its easier to know what they say? Like the usage of BBC-Persian, when BBC-English says the same thing. 83.108.225.137 (talk) 13:03, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
BBC Persian usually has more news about Iran than the English BBC World or BBC UK. Most of the things reported in BBC Persian are not available in English. If anyone finds an English version, it is completely welcome to add the source in English. 128.100.5.143 (talk) 22:53, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
Lead/introduction - please do not add new material to the lead/introduction
The lead section/introduction is for summarising the content of the article. That content should be appropriately NPOV-ed, RS-ed, etc. in the appropriate subsection. A reasonable summary (including repeats of a few of the most important references e.g <ref name="bloggsdaily" />) can then go in the lead. The lead is not the place to introduce new facts, and it's not the place to introduce the WP:WEASEL word "However" followed by anonymous "international" analysts' statements from one single country. Let the NPOV-ing take place in the subsection and then a consensus summary for the lead should not be too difficult. Here i'm just summarising in my own words. See WP:LEAD for a better, longer explication. Boud (talk) 03:28, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
MakeBelieveMonster in this edit you introduced material that is not in the main content of the article. Please read WP:LEAD and WP:WEASEL. It is true that the election result is disputed by some people in the US with political/economic/geostrategic interests in Iran. Please introduce that material in the international reactions section and work with other wikipedians to find a reasonable NPOV summary. Maybe propose it here before trying to add it to the lead/introduction. Boud (talk) 05:12, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
Incidentally "observers" in relation to elections tends to mean people who monitor how the elections are run. In this case, AFAIK international observers were not present (except maybe for a few random journalists). Boud (talk) 05:13, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
The only people permitted to stay at the polling stations when people were voting, and when ballots were being counted are: Security, local reputable people conducting the poll (taking, checking, and stamping ID cards, giving the ballots to the voters, ...), observers from Guardian Council (which is not running the election), MOI (internal observers and coordinators), and people selected by candidates to be present at polling stations as their observers. No other person is permitted to stay at the polling station or be present when votes are being counted. I have read that candidates had observers in at least half of polling stations, although if I remember correctly MOI stated that they had in all of them, both during the voting and counting. (IMHO, this makes it very hard to claim that there was a major result changing fraud. I have not read any claim of major fraud till 3 hours after MOI started to release the results, Ahmadinejad was leading 2 to 1 but Mousavi's election team released an announcement that people should not worry and Mousavi is going to win when the bigger ballot boxes are counted. The claims of fraud started after later released results did not fit what Mousavi's team predicted.) My point is, as no one else could have observed the voting, these other observers (journalist, and other claimed observers) could have only observed the campaigning period. 128.100.5.143 (talk) 05:46, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
Just to repeat this and some other points for people who wish to summarise the internal subsection and put that summary in the lead. Please discuss here if you disagree.
observers: See a few lines above regarding observers - there were no international observers at the election. (According to 12.100.5.143, there were observers from the candidates support groups at about half the polling stations according to a non-MOI source, while the MOI claimed candidates' observers were present at all polling stations.) We cannot use the vague term "observers" as an intelligent-sounding substitute for "people". Boud (talk) 12:15, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
world-view: WP:BIAS - en.wikipedia is not the US+UK wikipedia. The US+UK are not the international community (and in practice, whether right or wrong, generally oppose the majority of the international community). Boud (talk) 12:15, 14 June 2009 (UTC) - corrected wrong link Boud (talk) 12:19, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
notability/reliable sources/etc.: How important and notable are these various "analysts" and "journalists"? This is a more subjective judgment. IMHO, whatever the US/UK mainstream media claim, those claims are notable by the fact that these are highly influential sources of beliefs about the sociopolitical events, independently of whether the claims themselves are just urban legends or something close to the truth. Boud (talk) 12:15, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
International Observers
There has been no international observers present in Iran for election, only Guardian's Concil, MOI, and candidates had observers. I suggest removing "observers" from that sentence and moving it to international reaction section. 128.100.5.143 (talk) 05:06, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
See above about "lead"/intro. i agree that this should be changed in the international reaction section. If someone wants to propose a summary of international reactions for the lead, IMHO it would be best to propose it here on the talk page. After reasonable consensus, someone can put it in the lead. Boud (talk) 05:23, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
There are several instances of both spellings of his name. Can someone with write access go through and check his name for spelling consistancy? I do not have write access to this article. I don't know which spelling is correct, but the same spelling should be used throughout the article.
MrMoustacheMM (talk) 15:40, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing that out. I think the preferable spelling to use is "Mousavi" because that is how his name is spelled in the title of his own Wikipedia article and the predominant spelling here. I'll get started. If I miss some, anyone else should feel free to change those. --JamesAM (talk) 17:25, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
They seem flawed for a couple reasons:
1- they don't match any of the numbers provided by any side
2- they imply an acceptance of one parties numbers if we do provide them
3- they imply strongly that such firm numbers are accurate.
I really recommend we remove those statistics from there, or at least make its very clear that those numbers are contested.
1- The material is self serving, propaganda value.
2- Clearly violates this one
3- Meets this criteria
4- There is reasonable doubt though.
5- Thankfully not.
HawkShark (talk) 08:18, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
I've just had to revert the addition of a wholesale copy of the text that used to be in the "Coup of 12 June" article (which now redirects here). That article went through the AfD procedure (which can be located here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Coup of 12 June), with the result being to redirect here. — V = I * R (talk) 02:28, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
Note that adding some of the information that was in the Coup of 12 June article is OK. The material added needs to be neutral and verifiable, and it needs to fit in to the remainder of the article. Simply cutting and pasting text from the deleted article is completely unacceptable behavior. — V = I * R (talk) 05:45, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
Also, let me remind that it's not really good style to have dozens [1][2][3][4][5][6] of citations for a single paragraph. This only helps defuse things for people who want to actually verify those references, by making go through articles and articles; please, pick the salient ones (ones that aren't opinion pieces, coming from the most reliable, well-known sources, etc) and use those. --LjL (talk) 12:51, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
It seems that Samic130 does not want to understand. We have had high amount of continued ip vandalism here, that is why this article has been semi-protected for a second time. His actions does not seem appropriate either. In addition to what user I have written below about his actions in the part about that section, he has also added the "this article is too long" tag to both this and protests article when it was suggested that "his" article should be merged with this one, and now adds a copy of whole article here, reverting the changes other people apply repeatedly (I think the rule is more than three reverts in 24 hours causes the user to be banned temporarily. I think we should contact an admin to tell this person that his actions are inappropriate.128.100.5.142 (talk) 19:11, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
Please DO NOT DELETE the added text. You are "editors", not "deleters". Have the courage, discuss and edit the text. This text is based on highly reliable sources.--Andi horn (talk) 13:51, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
The text you're adding comes directly from the deleted article 'Coup of 12 June', which was removed because it was not NPOV, and its sources are editorials and opinion pieces, which are not reliable sources. Instead of simply dumping the text in en masse, please precis, rewrite and better source it. --Saalstin (talk) 14:34, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
Normally, I'd be all for preserving, but in this particular case, there was an AfD where most opinions were that the article was a badly sourced POV fork, and I think it's barely made being redirected rather than deleted. This article is already complete enough, so I believe it's up to you to trim the "other" article down to reasonable size, include only actually reliable sources, and properly merge it with this one. Others shouldn't have to painfully go through a huge amount of bogus references (editorials, opinion pieces, etc.) just to support something that an AfD didn't support. Seriously, change it first, then merge. I know I will revert if you don't. --LjL (talk) 00:26, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
Thank you for engaging in the talk page discussion, Samic. Will you please address the repeated concerns of the community that the material you are repeatedly dumping in this article is poorly sourced, not neutral point of view, and needs rewriting?--Saalstin (talk) 09:04, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
Funny person, I have only reverted that part once, and it was weeks ago. This person is giving me 3RR notice because I have given him/her 3RR notice. I think this person does not understand that this is not a game. If this person reverts once more I will report this user to admins to be banned. This is NOT a game. 128.100.5.132 (talk) 21:22, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
General Information About Iranian Presidential Election
Request for more info: electoral system
The article does not specify in what way the election is fought. This may be obvious to Iranians living in Iran, but it is not for international readers (such as me). Does the candidate with a plurality win? Are there multiple rounds? Is the popular vote used or is the vote counted using multiple districts? Who are eligible to vote? If someone who knows could add this information, it would be a major contribution to the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.131.189.89 (talk) 19:28, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
Done. Note: Add references and the requirements for being eligible to enter the race and become a candidate. rdt (talk) 15:50, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
Reformist? Conservative? Aren't they all chosen by the Ayatollah?
The terms "conservative" and "reformist" are used throughout the article with no explanation of their meaning or what the candidates stand for.
Given that all candidates must be approved by an extremely conservative Ayatollah, aren't all the candidates going to be far more conservative than the conservatives in other countries?
Are these the terms the candidates use to refer to their policies, or are they opinions of editors? Either way, it should be indicated what is being referred to.
I'm left with no idea what the candidates are standing for.
There's a link to Iranian reform movement at the beginning of the Campaign section. Please feel welcome to provide an appropriate point (or points) to link to that article earlier on in this article. Links are generally not supposed to go in section/subsection titles, so probably some text has to be added. Try looking through the articles on the individual candidates, and other Iran related articles, and you may find other useful links to crosslink. Boud (talk) 04:28, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
So the official result is that he has >66% of votes? This is inconsistent with the results shown in this article (62.63%)--MathFacts (talk) 18:07, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
To be officially president, Guardian Council has to approve the results after receiving complaints and checking them. They have 7 to 10 days for it. 128.100.5.143 (talk) 00:23, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
In this edit someone removed the point that Ahmadinejad is running for re-election, noting that this is redundant. Why is it redundant? At this point in the paragraph, there's no reason for the reader to suppose that Ahmadinejad is either allowed to run for re-election or that he is allowed to and has chosen so. IMHO we should revert this change. Boud (talk) 02:06, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
Rejected candidates
Sorry, I've never edited Wikipedia so I don't want to risk messing the page up. Perhaps someone with experience can help. I thought it would be useful to add something about how no female candidates were accepted, although about 40 had applied (I saw that on Al Jazeera). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.7.199.38 (talk) 13:23, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
Iranian Constitution states that one of requirement of a presidential candidates is to be well-known political or rigorous figures, in Persian رجال سیاسی یا مذهبی but the word رجال also has the literal meaning "men". Most people who are rejected are not well-known and Guardian Conceal can reject them easily just because of that. Most people say the phrase I noted in Persian means well-known political or religious fihures, whereas another interpretation is that it means well-known political or rigorous men, therefore GC can justify rejecting women candidates. GC is responsible for interpreting the constitution, the original meaning of the phrase in constitution can be tracked back to the notes of the discussion between the members of committee who wrote the constitution, which is published. I have not read it so I can not confirm that the more accepted interpretation i.e., "figures" not "men" was there or not. The thing we know is that GC has never allowed a female to become a candidate. 128.100.5.143 (talk) 05:34, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
Campaigning till Election (including polls, debates, campaign messages, ...)
TV debates between candidates
I have added a section for these debates. The schedule is available here: http://pr.irib.ir/Pictures/upload/upload17293ghoree-keshiphot.jpg
Karroubi vs Rezaie were the first one, Tuesday 88/3/12. Ahmadinejad vs Mousavi was the second one, Wednesday 88/3/13. I think this one was a good debate which makes comparing their policies easy. I am transcriptting it and will put it here soon. I am planning to translate it to English and then we can decide which part of it should be on the main page. 128.100.5.135 (talk) 23:44, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
Same story. If the poll is in favor of Mousavi, it is immediately reflected in poll section even if it is done by some small website; but if it is against him and published by major news agency... http://www.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8803190549 ...
Tabnak is affiliated with Rezaie, a conservative, Rajanews, and IRIB are close to Ahmadinejad, ... We have some polls by conservatives, and we try to add any poll we find. I am adding an other recent poll which is reported by conservatives showing Ahmadinejad is ahead. If you find one, you are welcome to add. 128.100.5.135 (talk) 00:56, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
To Visitingcause: all sources are likely to have some sort of bias. The best we can hope to do on wikipedia is show people the sources - in this case Fars News Agency - and readers will trace information to the sources and judge for themselves. The WP:NPOV consensus about Fars News Agency on that page is (presently): FNA is a privately-owned news agency, but is considered close to the Iranian judiciary. Its managing director Saeid Noubari is a former head of the public relations office of the Tehran Justice Department. It is also considered as a proponent of the extremely conservative part of the Islamic Republic of Iran. So it may be "a major news agency", but it also has a known bias, which could bias it in favour of the politically more "conservative" candidates. Anyway, does that source say "Ahmadinejad 62.5%, Moussavi 25.7%, Karoubi 2.6%, Rezaie 2.1%"? Can you give us more details (date, how many people polled, which cities, etc.) to put in the article? Boud (talk) 02:24, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
Not just "show people the sources", but also extract the small amount of claims of relatively objective aspects of the polls (organisation, number of people polled, date(s), city/region). A "small" organisation can sometimes, though not necessarily, do things more objectively than a "big" organisation. In any case, all edits of this article are very publicly logged - see [history of edits] - and discussion is encouraged here on this talk page. The history of the discussion is also publicly logged. Let's give the (relatively) verifiable information to the readers. Boud (talk)
IRIB/Alef/7 June
"more than 16,0000 people, 30 major cities in each Province" in the poll table - should that be "160,000" or "16,000" ? Boud (talk) 02:34, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
I revamped the section. It should now be clear what the differences are between the President and his rival.
I haven't been able to find a ref for that bit about the "Vice Police" being proposed to be eliminated. I heard this information in a PBSpodcast. I'm sure supporting citations can be found somewhere. The Squicks (talk) 07:19, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
Mousavi, Rezaie, and Karroubi all said that they will get rid of the moral police, they all stated it clearly in their TV debates. Ahmadinejad has also claimed that he is against it, but there has been some reports that his government asked for these moral police. 128.100.5.143 (talk) 19:46, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
Voting and Results
Inclusion of incomplete results
Should we include incomplete results in the page? Then numbers provided by PressTVhere are alleged official, and I'm willing to accept that they're true given the source's relationship to the government. (Or at least as true as will be revealed to the public anyway).
Obviously, as new information comes out we should update the numbers appropriately, but I don't see any barrier to inclusion. It's certainly notable and there's no general consensus to exclude election results when not all jurisdictions have finished counting yet. (Indeed, the template itself, used in nearly all election articles, is designed to facilitate this.) Thoughts, anyone? Kari Hazzard (T | C) 21:01, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure we should post any results here before they're official. Press TV is the Iranian government, and I don't know how official they're numbers are.--Patrick«»21:02, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
But, the election results, reported by Press TV is from the Iran Election Commission. These numbers are being reported by Western journalists as well. Rick Evans (talk) 21:06, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
I think the first counting is finished and is reported also in English media. For Persian I suggest BBC Persian's results here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/iran/2009/06/090613_ba-ir88-election-final-results.shtml The election commission releases the results. All candidates had observers in counting stations and although there has been reported irregularities, a fraud of this size seem improbable. Rezaie has accepted the result: http://www.tabnak.ir/fa/pages/?cid=51761 Karroubi does not accept the result: http://www.etemademelli.ir/published/0/00/45/4532/ the same thing with Mousavi: http://ghalamnews.ir/news-21117.aspx . There were reports by Mousavi's team that the first results are from small cities and villages which are counted faster because of their size, accepting that Ahmadinejad is leading in those places they stated that the overall result will change when the result of ballot boxes in more major cities is announced and their observers are telling them that they will lead in those places and win the election, biased on these reports Mousavi claimed victory 2 hours after polls closed and the counted ballots showed Ahmadinejad leading 7 million to Mousavi's 3 million. 128.100.5.143 (talk) 16:30, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
Just an observation... The Persian Wikipedia isn't including numbers either. I don't know Persian, so I have no way of knowing from the Talk page why they're not included... Just something I noticed. Kari Hazzard (T | C) 21:10, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
A proposal. How about I post these numbers.
3,462,548 votes (69.04%) for Ahmadinejad and 1,425,678 (28.42%) for Mousavi, with 19.42% of the ballots counted. 1.62% for Rezaei and 0.9% for Karroubi.[9][10]
The numbers are largely incomplete, but I will update them though out the night as I get information.
Rick Evans (talk) 21:21, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
If it's sourced well, then I guess no one can complain. I do recognize this stretches the idea of Wikipedia is all.--Patrick«»21:27, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
The vote totals for Ahmadinejad and Mousavi are cited, but I can't find any vote totals for the other candidates. They only cite percentages. I will not put totals until I have a source.Rick Evans (talk) 21:39, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure that counts as WP:OR. It's not an unpublished fact, argument, speculation or idea. Are the numbers in the published source? No, but they are derived from numbers in the published source with a degree of math that even a child could perform. In an article on the number 5, it is OR to say that 5 is the sum of 2 and 3? I'm kind of meh about the whole topic, but I don't follow your argument that it's OR. Kari Hazzard (T | C) 21:45, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
Something looks suspicious to me in the differences in the percentages going from 5 million to 10 million (19% to 35% ???? something wrong here too, unless the total number voting was updated) - the percentages look much too stable. i'm not criticising the person who made the edit! My instant reaction hypotheses (before checking): either the official sources are falsifying the figures without even trying to make them look credible (they underestimate the ability of citizens to analyse the documentary record), or maybe a wikipedia or al-jazeera editor accidentally copied the old percentages. In any case, something looks statistically unnatural here. Boud (talk) 22:00, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
It may be like an American election in which 35% of the vote means 35% of the precincts. I'm not sure, but this was what is being reported. Rick Evans (talk) 22:14, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
Hmmm - maybe. Here's a comment i prepared just now, before i saw your precinct % comment. Al-Jazeera right now 22:18, 12 June 2009 (UTC) has 68.88% for Ahmadinejad, so that reduces the chance that the wikipedia editor made an error. However, the total numbers of votes so far are up to 47.3% of votes counted. That's a lot more than 35%, and the chance that Ahmadinejad's percentage stuck at exactly 68.88% going from 35% counted to 47.% counted looks pretty low to me. Either al-Jazeera or the Electoral Commission have made some obvious errors - part of the article right now reads: According to Kamran Daneshjoo, chairman of the electoral commission at the interior ministry, with 47.3 per cent of ballot boxes counted, Ahmadinejad had received 15,251,781 votes. That compared to 4,628,912 for Mousavi, Daneshjoo said. The figures from the interior ministry so far give Ahmadinejad 68.88 per cent of the vote and Mousavi with just over 30 per cent. The first sentence implies that the total vote count is 15251781 / 0.473 = 32244780. Then 68.88% is 32244780*0.6888 = 22210204 votes for Ahmadinejad (not 15 million) and 4626912/32244780 = 14.35% for Mousavi, not 30%. Boud (talk) 22:18, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
The "precinct" comment is partly relevant here, since "47.3% of ballot boxes" is different to "47.3% of total votes". But the ratio of votes Ahm/Mou = 15251781/4628912 gives e.g. 68.88%/20.91% or 98.85%/30.00%; but not 68.88%/30%. Boud (talk) 22:30, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
Someone just deleted the incoming results - it seems like reporting results before they are final is standard for news outlets, and is fine to include here! 75.147.135.89 (talk) 23:32, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
I believe the best thing to do is to include incomplete results on the template. Dont transfer the data to the page. We can just save the template, on the main page, once we get the complete data.--Harish89 (talk) 23:36, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
Latest Results from BBC
Could someone translate Persian BBC and update the election results:
This seems like the most updated results. It's a reliable source as well.
I'm looking for an English source with these numbers, until then, I'm using this source simply to update the numbers.Rick Evans (talk) 22:58, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
Can someone find an MOI web site table of detailed official results?
Does anyone by any chance know of an official, relatively detailed table of results (e.g. breakdown by province, district)? A site in persian with either persian-arabic or western-hindi numerals would be ok. Right now 04:21, 14 June 2009 (UTC), the MOI - ministry of the interior = www.moi.ir home page has a filled-up hard disk problem (so it seems) - Server Error in '/Portal' Application. The transaction log for database 'tempdb' is full. To find out why space in the log cannot be reused, see the log_reuse_wait_desc column in sys.databases ... Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:2.0.50727.3053; ASP.NET Version:2.0.50727.3053 (Rather ironic that the MOI chooses to depend on a US corporation that sponsors the US government for its web software...)
IMHO we might want to include some info regarding detailed results in the article, and even if we don't, the existence of the detailed info would itself be a useful fact.
Boud (talk) 04:21, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
If the MOI is unwilling to publish this info immediately, then IMHO that would be a bit suspicious (but my suspicion would be original research only; on the other hand, an overt refusal to publish the data would be an NPOV fact). Nothing should be embarrassing about publishing corrections later on. Hmmm actualy, the request by Rezaie could be added to the article - IMHO it's notable. Boud (talk) 05:20, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
He has made this request just one or two hours ago (right now it is Sunday 9am). If MOI does not provide this information today, then I agree it is suspicious. 128.100.5.143 (talk) 05:28, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
I just heard on BBC Persian TV that MOI has released the details. I will provide a link to a source as soon as I find one. 128.100.5.143 (talk) 19:42, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
A backup of the xls file is now here: http://www.webcitation.org/5hXHfYNbN so it should be kept nicely archived at the U of Toronto (no conspiracy theories, please!) in case the MOI decides to change its mind regarding the figures it has just published... Boud (talk) 23:57, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
Guardian Council has stated that they has received letter from Mousavi and Rezaie complaining about the results and they are going to review the details (they have 7 to 10 days to do it and approve election). They have also said that they will release box by box results for the first time though they are not required to do this to inform people. Here is the link: http://tabnak.ir/fa/pages/?cid=51895128.100.5.143 (talk) 02:35, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
Allegations of Fraud, evidences, counter-evidences
Results analysis
Right now the analysis is a bit cluttered. I was thinking it would be a good idea to list the issues one by one and write a collection of various interpretations by political analysts underneath. For example:
Mousavi more likely to win in Azeri provinces - Barzega says this. Cole refutes that. Leveretts state this.
Wishful thinking from Western journalists - Barzega, Cole etc. etc.
What do you guys think.
Also, what's up with the "apparent decrease in votes" screenshots? Is there any source for these? I haven't seen the decrease in votes criticised in any article and it is stated in the description that "in the past many votes were cancelled because they were invalid". If it's part of the electoral process and not any irregularity or fraud then I suggest we remove them. Right now it looks like original research.
Malangyar (talk) 23:19, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
It is confirmed, but it has been explained. There are two forms for reporting votes, form 22 and form 28. From 22 is filled in polling stations, while form 28 is for reporting sum of these from 22 from a number of polling stations. MOI changed the way it reported the votes in the middle of reporting from form 22 to form 28 and stated that this may caused differences with previous results. It was announced by MOI when they changed from from 22 to form 28. Also note that Rezai whose vote has drop because of this change has not made a complaint about this drop. 128.100.5.129 (talk) 19:13, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
{{editsemiprotected}}
I recently did some visualizations of Walter Mebane's results, which I think make his analysis more accessible to non-statisticians. They're available at http://www.math.umd.edu/~lotze. I recognize this may be just self-promotion, but I thought I would request adding this at the end of the Results analysis paragraph:
Not done: That looks like something that might interest the reader, but inserting it in the copy seems awkward; it seems more like an external link. If you agree, could you supply a subsection (new or existing) and text to display. The other way to include your work would be to take one or two of the visualizations and add them as graphics. If that makes more sense to you, go ahead and upload them, then suggest where to insert them. Cheers, Celestra (talk) 13:39, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
The article lacks a mention of the (preliminary) analysis on the election results by the London think tank Chatham House and the Institute of Iranian Studies of the University of St Andrews [9]. I think this should be added to the Results analysis section. (Amabileque (talk) 22:34, 5 July 2009 (UTC))
concerns about election fraud
That should be a section. Journalist Journalist Hossein Bastani of Rooz has been reporting on this. Additionally the IRGC are interfering with the elections contrary to the law.--Ithinkgood (talk) 22:09, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
Prepare a draft here if you're not confident enough to try directly in the article. Given the huge differences between different polling organisations' claims, we can probably expect claims of election fraud whatever happens... See WP:NPOV and WP:RS for hints. Boud (talk) 02:06, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
How exactly do we plan to do this?
With all the shit going down around the election... the fact SOMETHING is wrong about the results and everything else... how od we plan to "handle the facts" when sides are saying who the government says won and others... this articles going to be alot of "but X says Y" isn;'t it for results...--Jakezing (Your King) (talk) 04:44, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
Do it at WikiNews, the distill WikiNews' sources? ... First we can have statements by the campaigns of the various candidates, and then we can have reputable international electioneering organizations' statements, and ofcourse the Iranian government. 70.29.212.226 (talk) 10:35, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
You realise that the Basij militia is the ones administering the voting? FRAUD
Conversation not related to article improvement
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
This is a charade. There is absolutely NO DOCUMENTATION whatsoever that this is an ELECTION. It is simply people casting votes then the mullahs decides who wins. This article is completely UNFOUNDED and UNDOCUMENTED. The mullah regime CANNOT be considered a reliable source. M99 87.59.77.128 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 12:47, 13 June 2009 (UTC).
It is an election. We can not reject results because of we don't like it. Let me see, the things reported are not only by MULLAH's REGIME, it is reported by many sources, reformist sites, human-right campaigners, university students, bloggers, western media reporters, ... . If you don't know what is the situation in Iran, don't claim you know. For last three election the persons elected were not the ones supported by clerics. Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is one of most powerful clerics in Iran, he is the head of Assembly of Experts and Chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council, the first solves disagreement between Parliament and Guardian Conceal, and the second one has the power to elect or change the leader and observes his actions and is elected by direct vote. He is also one of the most close friend of leader since many year before the revolution, was the head of Parliament and was also President for two term before Khatami, is a member of the most important conservative party (Combatant Clerics Association), it is claimed that he is very rich and some even used to say that has more power than the leader himself, calling him Akbar Shah. He ran for election against Ahmadinejad in the last election and lost 10 million to 17 million to Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad ran his campaign in this election by saying that he is running against him and people like him who he claims have made fortunes through corruption and Mousavi, Rezaie, and Karroubi are just his friends. Rafsanjani supported and campaigned for Mousavi. Therefore as you see your claims are just baseless and nonsense. The situation and the system in Iran is much more complicated that a theoretic dictatorship as some claim. It is not a full democracy, but it is much more democratic than almost all countries in the middle east. Try to hold free elections in any of Arab countries in Persian Gulf and you will see the one elected is not the one western countries like. We do not like the results but we should try to remain objective. 128.100.5.143 (talk) 16:51, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
I have my information from a native who is just returned from Teheran. Please come up with any documentation to prove your claim. It DOES NOT live up to the definition of an election. It is you who is spouting baseless nonsense. BACK UP YOUR CLAIMS.... this is is WikiPedia not a forum for your personal theories. Until there is documention that this is an election, it must NOT BE CALLED SO. Saddam Hussein had "elections" too but they were treated for what they were... M99 87.59.76.114 (talk) 19:02, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
Well, I see now. You are correct, since you have heard what you say from a single person who has visited Iran and returned recently, but I who have lived in Iran for more than 25 years and voted for reformists in 4 Presidential Elections, and all these bloggers, human-right campaigners, students, reformists politicians in Iran; academics, wester media like BBC, ... are wrong because we don't have any facts to support our claim. That is really interesting. If you want, take a look at Iran's constitution which is available on English wiki, at BBC's page about who runs Iran, at Abbas Milani's (a Professor of Politics at Stanford University who has been critical of Iran's regime for many years) talk at authors@Google, at Akbar Ganji's talk at Authors@Google. Also I invite you to select any part of what I have written above, and I will provide you with more than enough references for what I have said. 128.100.5.143 (talk) 19:28, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
This only makes much it worse, not only can you not BACKUP YOUR CLAIMS you are also biased. You are obviously not neutral and not fit to write this article. The constitution of Iran is bullshit, anyone knows the Mullahs rule as they like. My FRIEND WAS TORTURED in Teheran so I don't buy your "constitution". And for the last time, either you provide references for your claims or it must be deleted. THERE IS NO INDEPENDENT VERIFICATION OF THE FAIRNESS OF THIS "ELECTION" PERIOD. M99 87.59.76.114 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 19:49, 13 June 2009 (UTC).
Sorry, I didn't know that to be unbiased I should not be Iranian. Neither I knew that constitution is bullshit, all I knew is 99% of Iranians voted yes for it. Please tell me if there is a reasonable way to convince you, you don't accept what Iranians say, you don't accept the most basic legal document of Iran, I don't know what I should provide to justify what I said, maybe the only reliable *unbiased* source is your friend who is *tortured in Iran*. If he/she is the only acceptable source, why are you bothering reading wiki, go ask her/him. Can BBC convince you? Check this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8051750.stm, also as far as I know it is referred in all media including western media, as election. The question of how free the election is is different. I have already stated that this is not a full (western style) democracy, but if you are claiming that people have no effect on who will be the president, you are wrong. Nobody expected Khatimi to win, nobody expected Ahmadinejad to win agaisnt Rafsanjani. Also take a look at this: http://www.terrorfreetomorrow.org/upimagestft/TFT%20Iran%20Survey%20Report%200609.pdf The institution reporting it seems to be a reputable one and noted in CNN and other major networks. 128.100.5.143 (talk) 21:31, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
I'm glad you write this because the more you write. the more it is clear to everyone that you're one the few Iranians supporting the regime. Also, the burden of proof is on YOU(and the regime which you represent) not me. Your cherrypicking of links is of absolutely no value, neither would it matter if I picked a dozen links to the contrary(which are rolling in in numbers btw). NOONE but the mullahs know what happened to the votes, how they were counted, neither CNN nor BBC. THERE WERE NO INDEPENDENT OBSERVERS. I repeat, this is not an election. There is no documentation that it lives up to the definition of an election. Do you even know what an election is? An election is when people vote and the one who gets the most votes win. The only thing this charade has in common with an election is that people vote(primarily to keep their jobs). The mullahs decide who wins regardless of the votes. Everyone knows it was a fraud. Come up with a UN report declaring it fair if you can. M99 87.59.76.202 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 05:46, 14 June 2009 (UTC).
Check this: http://www.terrorfreetomorrow.org/upimagestft/TFT%20Iran%20Survey%20Report%200609.pdf by Terror Free Tomorrow which CNN and other mainstream western media consider reputable and reliable. All candidate had observers in polling stations, both during voting and counting. Refer to the part about observers below to understand. I also want to repeat this from below: Supreme Leader has the final say, yes, but he does not interfere in day to day politics, he is bound by constitution, Assembly of Experts who elect him, have the power to change him, observe his actions, and they are elected by directly from people's vote every four years. Take a look at the files I have linked above by http://www.terrorfreetomorrow.org/. If you think Iranian people are suppressed, you are wrong. Tell me, why 85% of all people eligible to vote, voted in this election if they oppose the system so strongly as you suggest? Why 24 million out of 46 million people over 18 years old (I agree that it is possible that they have been fraud, but not more than 2-3 million) have voted for Ahmadinejad if they oppose him? Look at poll by www.terrorfreetomorrow.com I provided above. I have asked you above to give me a reasonable way to convince you, but it seems that you have a fixed opinion that no amount of evidence will change. I have provided reliable sources, now it's your turn to support your claims. 128.100.5.143 (talk) 20:01, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
"If you think Iranian people are suppressed, you are wrong"? HAHAHAHAHAHhahahaha. LOL you remind me of Ahmadinejad. Constantly repeating himself and acting like a sorry comedian. You know very well it was fraud, so what is the point of discussing? When the mullahs fall, it will be time for you and your Basij friends to exile. I suggest you start packing up now LOL M99 87.59.102.169 (talk)
I see, you have no reliable source or evidence to support your claims, only baseless personal attacks and threats. It seems that you are the one repeating yourself. I don't see any reason to continue this discussion. 128.100.5.198 (talk) 00:25, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
Election Fraud
How do we deal with this now with regard to NPOV, virtually all international organisations, voter rights groups in Iran, all the opposition, and the free press are saying that the election was at best rigged, but more likely the result was just made up rather than using the result from ballots being counted, instigated by Ahmadinejad’s henchmen. The “Supreme Leaders” TV channel was broadcasting that it was almost a dead heat when 25% of the vote had been counted, then went off air, the same with revolutionary guards TV channel. He has put troops on the street, banned people collecting in groups, banned protest, blocked most internet media and shut down the mobile telephone network to help him in his theft of the presidency.
It seems obvious to everyone apart from Ahmadinejad’s minions (and probably even them) that the election was rigged, yet this article mentions almost nothing of this, just one line that hints that some people may think that it has been. MattUK (talk) 13:30, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
It has been reported that Ahmadinejad even received a huge majority in the heartland areas of the opposition, in areas where exit polls showed that he would have got 1-2% of the vote, the election board reported that that he got 80%+ of the vote, if someone was going to rig an election they should at least try to make it beleivable. MattUK (talk) 13:33, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
From having a look at various news sources it seems that most of the Iranian news media dose not qualify as a reliable source as it it controlled by Ahmadinejad, and just follows his orders, it could be used to state a point of view but I personally don't think that it could be used as a "reliable source" for facts, probably the same would apply for the Election Board, what do others think? MattUK (talk) 13:36, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
While I personally am willing to believe the election was probably rigged, your argument here seems to use weasel words. Can you provide some sources? Maybe we can write an entire section on the fraud allegations? Kari Hazzard (T | C) 14:31, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
Remember, we have to comply with NPOV here... Let's be willing to believe, for the sake of argument, that he could have won 2/1. Supremely doubtful and implausible, yes, but it's possible. And currently we have no reliable sources giving us different numbers. So as Vyvyan Basterd said, let's wait until we have more reliable information. Kari Hazzard (T | C) 15:01, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
It is irrelevant what we believe. All that matters is what reliable sources say. As it stands now the article gives several sources which do dispute the result. The fact that he won 2/1 is neither here nor there, since there's no evidence from the article that he didn't have this level of support beyond a bunch of polls with extremely high variance and which the article itself says "The opinion polls in Iran have been considered unreliable. A number of polls conducted between relatively small voting groups, like university students and workers, have been reported as election propaganda. More general polls reported in the media do not state the polling organization nor the basic facts about the methodology. The results show a high variance and depend heavily on who is reporting the poll" Nil Einne (talk) 16:00, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
While I have no opinion about the results, 32% of 75% of 46 million is a LOT of people (I see the article gives 13,216,411), enough to have a major riot. And there definitely have been riots cause by a minority in the past in many countries. Therefore the fact that people are rioting doesn't demonstrate anything other then the existence of a dispute. Nil Einne (talk) 15:53, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
Agreed, those who riot over soccer games or burn flags/effiges typically get uspet over other things too. As to all the 'Death to the dictator' chants going on, as they say: People who live in glass houses shouldn't stone people. --PigFlu Oink (talk) 16:05, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
Although you can rig a couple of thousand votes. We are talking about more than 12-15 Million votes. It is impossible to rig an election in such a way. In addition: Karroubi had observers in every voting station so let us not insinuate in any way that rigging has occured, there is NO proof of rigging and the accusation is unfounded. Rezai, a candidate says we must accept our loss and help Ahmadinejad's government improve Iran. The protesting because of 'rigging' was proportional and the streets are now calm. Mousavi expected a victory with less than 2 weeks of campaigning, it is surprising that he even gained the 30% vote that was given to him. Please let us stay on point and provide Facts and not allegations, I understand allegations are more than easy to come by and use in this article, but there is no rigging found anywhere during the election by any observer. In addition, there was no reason to rig candidates as they were already approved beforehand as we all know. Unfounded. Paradoxic (talk) 16:32, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
As stated above we should just stick to what is found in reliable sources. Nothing more. We are not here to speculate about these things nor are we here to dismiss what is found in reliable sources. Obviously there are conflicting views here and we report them without evaluating what is or is not correct or plausible. We just report what is found in the sources per our usual standards for inclusion of information. That's it. Vyvyan Basterd (talk) 16:42, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
"ousavi announced on his website that he in fact was the person that received the majority of the voting and that his name was replaced by Ahmadinejad's.[11] Several political analysts have contested the results.[12]"
This is reported by Moj webstie, but Mousavi's website, Ghalamnews does not state it. Ghalamnews states that the people should not pay attention to suspicious emails and sms and websites saying Mousavi said something and all of his announcements will be made by his team and made available on his official websites like Ghalamnews. Therefore Moj's report about what Mousavi said is not reliable and I suggest removing it. Note: Moj is website of young supporting and campaigning for Mousavi, but not official. The results have shocked many, and feelings are running high. So we should be careful in using sources when they claim someone said something while the person's official sites do not mention it. 128.100.5.143 (talk) 17:29, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
Were those men there during the vote counting? Were those men there to make sure they didn't lie about who had more votes? Think about it.. secret counting only leads to fraud.Besides.. all those people who protested seem to disagree with your statement... and Riot police are VERY useful for dispersing crowds if you didn't know they had those guys as well.--Jakezing (Your King) (talk) 17:38, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
Yes, they were. Mousavi's team first announced at 2am local time, when Ahmadinejad was leading 7 million to 3 million implicitly that the count is correct but these are rural areas and small cities and the result will change when the result of major cities is announced and Mousavi is going to win. Why they did not object just after the polls closed? Why they didn't object after first results arrived? Riots can be explained easily, because many people (including me), specially young in Tehran thought based on polls and Mousavi's campaign, Mousavi is going to defeat Ahmadinejad. One third of voters have voted for Mousavi. These people have campaigned fiercely for Mousavi. It is hard to accept the result for these people, the feelings are running very high. I have read on some blogs of people in Karroubi's and Mousavi's campaign head quarters state that they don't think that a fraud of this size is possible and they lack evidence for it. There are irregularities, but it does not seem that they can come close to change the result this much. I also want to point out the opinion polls reported by Alef a few days ago. 128.100.5.143 (talk) 18:04, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
This is ALL speculation, as an Iranian I also voted. It is surprising that Mousavi even got 34% out of 2 weeks campaigning. That is praiseworthy. But let us NOT speculate about fraud because some people are not happy with the outcome. The west especially wants to press on this issue because it does not want to tolerate another 4 years of Ahmadinejad. But the idea of rigging is completely unfounded propaganda and gossip. Please specify this clearly on the page.--Paradoxic (talk) 18:17, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
I think it's self-evident that any government finds it implausible that it rigged an election. Right now we should wait for any official international reactions to appear in reliable sources and then make sure we add the Iranian government's responses to those statements. Vyvyan Basterd (talk) 18:30, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
Check this: http://baharvin.blogfa.com/post-384.aspx This is the blog of one of women campaigning for Karroubi. She says that Mousavi and Karroubi's teams has ignored the results of opinion polls by relatively creditable polling organizations with a long history of polling like this (it is not possible to include the link, wiki says it is blacklisted, please check her website) to not drop the support for Mousavi and increase the number of voters by not disappointing them. The results of the poll are very similar to the final result. She also states that the polling organization is close to Mousavi. 128.100.5.143 (talk) 18:23, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
Supreme Leader has the final say, yes, but he does not interfere in day to day politics, he is bound by constitution, Assembly of Experts who elect him, have the power to change him, observe his actions, and they are elected by directly from people's vote every four years. Take a look at the files I have linked above by http://www.terrorfreetomorrow.org/. If you think Iranian people are suppressed, you are wrong. Tell me, why would 85% of all people eligible to vote, voted in this election if they oppose the system so strongly as you suggest? Why 24 million out of 46 million people over 18 years old (I agree that it is possible that they have been fraud, but not more than 2-3 million) have voted for Ahmadinejad if they oppose him? Look at poll by www.terrorfreetomorrow.com I provided above. 128.100.5.143 (talk) 19:43, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
LOL! This is the first time I have been acknowledged in a paper by my IP address. Thank you. :) (right now I am a little busy to read your paper, but I will do as soon as I find time, after all this is a paper I am acknowledged in!) 128.100.5.198 (talk) 00:53, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
Boud, I think that it may be more helpful if you compare it to a number of other elections, e.g., Iranian Presidential Elections 2005. I have seen hear: http://bpa.und.nodak.edu/economics/seminarseries/paper%20---%20Hadi%20Esfahani%20--%20Voting%20for%20Populism.pdf that MOI has also released it for 2005, but the paper states the percentages not the number of votes. I will try to find something better so you can apply your statical analysis to it and compare it to 2009. You can also apply it to a number of other elections in other countries since if I understood correctly, the same distribution of digits should appear. 128.100.5.129 (talk) 04:09, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
There's an update to this paper - it's now at v2 - http://arxiv.org/abs/0906.2789 . Three of the six biggest voting areas all have "Karroubi 7" votes - Shiraz 7078, Isfahan 7002, Mashhad 7098 - and they all voted for Ahmadinejad in greater proportions Shiraz 60.0%, Isfahan 60.9%, Mashhad 66.9% than for the three non-Karroubi-7 voting areas among the biggest six voting areas (49.7%, 53.7%, 43.3%).
From a strict wikipedia POV, this needs RS. For the moment, the closest things to RS AFAIK are:
the article itself in terms of quoting what the article claims as claims
the total votes, the voting counts for Karroubi, and the proportions of counts for Ahmadinejad in the biggest six voting areas can be directly read from the MOI file without requiring anything beyond elementary arithmetic operations (what voting areas have the biggest numbers? what are Ahmadinejad's proportions of votes ?) and reading Persian- IMHO the MOI is a RS for this information (remember: RS does not mean unbiased, and the MOI is surely a RS for the official vote counts, independently of how closely they match the true counts) - http://www.webcitation.org/5hYWBcT7whttp://www.moi.ir/ostan.xls
in a few days' time there should be a New Scientist article discussing this and, i expect, Mebane's work
The following two figures are GFDL+CC-BY-SA uploaded to the commons - feel free to use them - or redraw them independently, directly based on the MOI data. Boud (talk) 15:54, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
In the analysis section there is a quote from Walter R. Mebane Jr.:
Walter R. Mebane Jr., a University of Michigan professor of political science and statistics and an expert on detecting electoral fraud has said: "There are suspicious elements here, but there's no solid evidence of fraud".[106]
"While it is not possible given only the current data to say for sure whether this reflects natural complexity in the political processes or artificial manipulations, the numerous outliers comport more
with the idea that there was widespread fraud than with the idea that all the departures from the model are benign." (from page 13)
OR
"I think the results [of comparing 2005 and 2009 data] give moderately strong support for a diagnosis that the 2009 election was affected by significant fraud." (page 9)
Walter R. Mebane, Jr has updated his paper and found new results in his website he has updated his paper.he says in the paper:"the numerous outliers comport more with the idea that there was widespread fraud than with the idea that all the departures from the model are benign.".please observe this important result. Iranelection2009 (talk) 16:47, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
i renamed the section - this internal link should work, otherwise search "Benford" on this page using your browser find function (e.g. control F). Note that you'll need to create a user account and make enough constructive edits over several days, in order to establish a minimal reputation, if you wish to edit the article page. Details are at the link at the top of the article page. Boud (talk) 14:36, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
"Not credible" quote
From the cited Fox News article (citation #8): "U.S. analysts find it "not credible" that challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi would have lost the balloting in his hometown or that a third candidate, Mehdi Karoubi, would have received less than 1 percent of the total vote, a senior U.S. officials told FOX News. " I don't see how the vague "US Analysts" can turn into the "Obama administration". While I personally am both an Obama supporter and think the Iranian election results were not credible, I think it's completely inaccurate to say as though it were encyclopedic fact that the Obama administration said the results weren't credible. If I don't hear any arguments, I'll be removing that line. Eeblet (talk) 18:59, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
agreed remove it. However the Gibbs written statement and the Clinton statement say the White House is keeping a close eye on the situation as it unfolds including accusations of voter fraud and hopes the final outcome honsetly reflects the will of the people. --PigFlu Oink (talk) 19:04, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
Pigflu, if you wanted to add a paraphrase of that, it might be good; it would accurately capture the middle line the administration is sticking to. I went ahead and removed only the latter half of the sentence, left the rest including the citations. Eeblet (talk) 19:07, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
We definitely should say something about the evidence that occurred and seems to scientifically prove that some results of the election are false. I recommend that we should put the information below. The sources are accessible in polish wikipedia.
Boudewijn F. Roukema from Polish Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń observed that the distribution of the first digits of the numbers of persons who had voted for Mehdi Karroubi in some electoral districts were in contradiction with statistical Benford's law. Among the first digits, seven emerges twice more frequently that it should according to the law ( statistical significance 0,007). The anomalies occur in three of the six biggest electoral districts and in fact these are the districts where Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gained proportionally higher results than in the rest of the country. However, statisticians Nate Silver and Andrew Gelman have questioned the significance of Roukema’s observations.
The entire affair has been described in polish press today, inter alia in Gazeta Wyborcza.
IMHO "scientific proof of fraud" is too strong. "A statistical analysis claiming that the results for 366 voting areas are very improbable in the absence of artificial intervention" would be a more accurate summary IMHO, though i do have a COI. Anyway, the following two figures are GFDL+CC-BY-SA uploaded to the commons - feel free to use them - or redraw them independently, directly based on the MOI data. Boud (talk) 21:07, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
It shows two men filling out ballots with names and made up ID #'s.
The Iranian ballots come in two halves. One half has your personal information and your national id# (similar to SS# in the U.S.) and other half is where you put the candidate's name and number and that is the part that actually goes in the ballot box -- that is your vote. The first half (with your personal info) is kept as record of your vote by the interior ministry. They also put a stamp in your passport or id card to show that you voted. Each ballot has two stamps at the top and the bottom divided by the vertical perforation separating the two halves. So that once separated each half of the ballot has a partial stamp on it.
Visually, the left half (which has your personal info) has 6 boxes, while the right half (that has your vote) has two boxes.
In this video you can see that at first they are writing on the right halves, (i.e. the votes). The man then beings to fill out the left halves with made up names and ID's. You can see that he is making up the id numbers (the bottom left most box) because he counts the digits to make sure they are right. It also looks like this is happening in someone's house (you can hear a child at the end).
The very existence of this video proves something very fishy. These ballots are controlled by the Interior Ministry and are to be filled at the voting places -- overseen by all representatives -- and all halves must be counted and sealed in the boxes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Afara (talk • contribs) 00:11, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
IMHO, this is fake. Please stop posting material which are only rumors, or provide a reliable source. Also, what you have stated about the voting process is not correct. Note that the page is semi-protected because of heavy vandalism, people trying to use wikipedia for propaganda. 142.1.153.49 (talk) 05:14, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
What do you mean it is fake? And why do you say that it is incorrect about the voting process?! Have you ever voted in Iranian elections? I have. I'm not trying to post a rumor, or start a flame war. I'm posting what I've found and it looks pretty good to me. Can you tell me how/why you think it is fake?
Besides people believe they just made up numbers, and box stuffing wasn't a significant factor.
What I find fishy is why would they have allowed themselves to be filmed? On the other hand, it's true that Nazi's filmed their own crimes as they thought that they would stay in power. Perhaps they were sure that nobody would lay hands on that video? Any other ideas? But regretfully, such a film from an unidentified source that is not self-evidently a true event cannot be accepted. Harald88 (talk) 20:32, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
On second thought, I should clarify this better: it's not such video's themselves that cannot be accepted, but the presentation of them as fact about what really happened (and which we cannot verify). In other contexts they may be appropriate, for example if a big TV station discussed them then a paragraph with mention of that discussion (which is a fact) together with links to the video's could be appropriate (it's also a fact that they exist and that they were noted). Harald88 (talk) 21:41, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
Rigging
I suggest that in the light of 1) Underexposure of rigging allegations in popular media 2) The well known history of hostility of the US to a) Double and Triple check the sources on the matter and add more if possible b) If it is shown that is most likely according to sources to have had rigging, to expose this article as much as possible. Wikipedia is not a Party but knowledge should be exposed and Democracy respected. --AaThinker (talk) 20:12, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
I think he/she proposes to collect a balanced and even comprehensive overview of opinions about rigging (which I think is quite well on its way!). If the concensus is clear, then according to AaThinker, this article can be used to inform people about what likely happened (with the idea that the concensus probably will be that rigging took place and that concensus most likely corresponds to truth). Harald88 (talk) 21:51, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
Care must be taken when using consensus to inform without evidence in support. For example, despite consensus (outside the U.S.) that one of the U.S. elections was stolen, albeit without the protests we see in Iran, it is not presented as such and the controversy is in fact considerably played down because of the scarcity of evidence of which there was more than is currently available for Iran. Wayne (talk) 09:17, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
There was a "consensus" that Iraq had WMDs but it wasn't true. See the compiled list of fraud claims and counterclaims at http://www.iranaffairs.com
At various points in history, popular opinion has proved incorrect. This is a far cry from 'never trusting popular opinion ever again'. Your edits have been overwhelmingly in support of the current government of Iran. Please keep a neutral standpoint, recognize how this situation appears, and avoid posting from non-reliable sources, like Blogs. --King ♣Talk20:27, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
Reference translation needed
The following claim in the article
Mousavi announced on his website that he in fact was the person that received the majority of the voting and that his name was replaced by Ahmadinejad's.
does not have an English-language reference. The reference used in the article
does not give this claim in its English version. Could someone check if the above claim is indeed stated in the Persian version, and if so, provide an in-context translation of the claim? Without such a translation, foreign-language references are not allowed in the English wikipedia. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 19:16, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
Mousavi has repeatedly said that his own sites and member of his headquarter are the only reliable sources about what he says and his position. Moj is not one of them, therefore, IMHO, it is completely irrelevant if it is on Moj or if it is not. (FYI, I didn't saw it in the text on the link you provided, you can check it also yourself using Google Translate.). 128.100.5.139 (talk) 00:08, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
1. In the excel file released earlier
the total number of votes added to spoiled voted did not match the total number of vote and was less by more 98000 votes.
2. In ballot details in the Lorestan province
there is a ballot number 21 which has negative six (-6) spoiled vote which is unrealistic
WP:SYNTH- do not break down or combine sources to draw conclusions not explicitly stated in said sources.
WP:NOR- No Original Research. Link a source TALKING about the inconsistencies, don't just point them out yourself.
There was more than 100% turnout in some cities for the simple fact that Iranians do not have to vote in their home districts. That is normal in Iran, not a sign of fraud.
Others pointed out that the ballots seemed designed to lead opposition voters astray. Voters were obliged to choose a candidate and fill in a code. Though Mr. Moussavi was candidate No. 4, the code No. 44 signified Mr. Ahmadinejad.
One employee of the Interior Ministry, which carried out the vote count, said the government had been preparing its fraud for weeks, purging anyone of doubtful loyalty and importing pliable staff members from around the country.
“They didn’t rig the vote,” claimed the man, who showed his ministry identification card but pleaded not to be named. “They didn’t even look at the vote. They just wrote the name and put the number in front of it.”
New Yorker blog oneliner - dissident MOI employees' open letter
We presently have a citation to a single sentence in this New Yorker blog claiming "There can be no question that the June 12, 2009 Iranian presidential election was stolen. Dissident employees of the Interior Ministry, which is under the control of President Ahmadinejad and is responsible for the mechanics of the polling and counting of votes, have reportedly issued an open letter saying as much." If this is true, it should be fairly easy to find this "open letter" in the original persian/farsi. Remember that "reportedly" is a way of saying "we're not totally sure if this is just a rumour or not".
Can someone find any more direct report of this open letter or even better, the letter itself? After all, there's not much point just saying an open letter exists. Otherwise it's not terribly open... Or is it just a rumour that will feed back on itself and grow? Boud (talk) 19:21, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
Your implications that the item is less reliable because it is mentioned in a single sentence, or that The New Yorker would print rumours without designating them as such, seem somewhat strange. I couldn't find another source, but The New Yorker will do until things clear up a bit more. Jalapenos do exist (talk) 19:37, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
The article already says A report by The New Yorker has stated, which means that the claim is attributed properly. Scare quotes and loaded anti-New-Yorker language are not acceptable. The Squicks (talk) 20:42, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
The New Yorker has indeed designated the rumour as such, but using a weasel word:
see wiktionary:reportedly: according to reports or rumors; supposedly (Example:) They reportedly went last week, but I couldn't prove it.
see WP:WEASEL#Examples of examples not to follow: "It has been reported that..."
Squicks - you're right that we should put quotes around the whole thing if we keep it and not just one word - done. To both of you and others reading this: for the moment i'm not suggesting we remove it. Maybe it is something more than just a rumour, but we certainly cannot convert this to something that is more definite than TNY claims it is. As for "loaded anti-New-Yorker language", it's TNY itself which uses the weasel word. Feel free to write to TNY and complain if you believe that this is below their usual standards. Boud (talk) 21:54, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
Oh for Pete's sake, "Boud". Imagine if I wrote that President Obama said, "reportedly", that "Boud" was (...) or something like that. These things are scare quotes, plain and simple. And the New Yorker did not call it a "rumor", this is nothing but pure original research by you. The Squicks (talk) 22:57, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
i agree with your point about scare quotes - quoting it alone is too ambiguous. Given the meaning of the word "reportedly" as given by wiktionary, there's no need to quote it - it's a weasel word and so should not normally be used unless it's part of a longer quote, so that the weasality is attributed to the source, not to wikipedia. See wiktionary and WP:WEASEL regarding your OR suggestion. i did not work on that particular wiktionary page, and if i ever worked on the WP:WEASEL page, it's a long time ago, so neither of these can be my own OR. i agree that TNY did not literally use the word "rumour"; it used a weasel word that sounds like it means something more serious than a rumour. In any case, we seem to have consensus on a valid sentence as of the version as of the present version. Boud (talk) 00:51, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
Result "details"
I object to posting the following in the main article for the reasons below:
Distribution of votes between the two major candidates as the results came in (in millions). The data shows an R-squared value of .998.[13]
Another inconsistency has been alleged in the way the results were reported. Six sets of data released by the Interior Ministry show an almost perfectly linear progression of the distribution of votes between Ahmadinejad and Moussavi, which has been seen as a statistical impossibility.[13][14] Statistician Nate Silver, however, has compared the data to those of the 2008 United States presidential election and concluded that this data set cannot be used as evidence of a flawed election – without thereby making any judgment on whether the election was rigged or not. [15] This claim by Nate Silver is disputed.[15]
Nate Silver was disputed on his website. Several said the Iranian results has an accuracy much greater then the US election. Some that his values selected were not in order of time. I tried to find some figures for release of the US election results by time to check but could not find anything
The original "statistical impossibility" claim is not based on any statistical model, no null hypothesis is given, no p-value. Nate Silver is right in that you are not supposed to do a linear regression on a time series which is effectively what the "statistical evidence" is. But Nate Silver also doesn't use a statistical model, a null hypothesis or a p-value.
If one plots the new votes reported in each of the six waves of results one gets
which is a lot more noisy than the plot of the cumulative totals. But the plot of the increments is the proper plot to do because it constitutes independent random variables whereas the cumulative totals are not independent.
I agree with Miguel. "The Lede" in The New York Times reported the same thing, but then agreed it was evidence of nothing.--Wehwalt (talk) 20:55, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
I removed a sentence stating that Nate Silver's June 15 analysis "refuted the June 13 claim by Cole that Ahmadinejad overperformed in Tehran." That was problematic for a few reasons. Silver didn't claim that Cole was wrong about Tehran. Silver didn't say that Ahmadinejad's Tehran's result seemed legitimate. So it seems like original research to put those words in Silver's mouth. Ahmadinejad's reported vote share in Tehran in 2009 was actually bigger than the conservative vote percentage in 2005. But what Silver said was that the conservative improvement in Tehran was smaller than his improvement in most other regions. To say that Silver's analysis refutes Cole's analysis ignores what Cole states. Cole states that Ahmadinejad likely only did as well as he did in Tehran in 2005 because of a massive reformist voter boycott there. In other words, Cole is saying that a 2005 to 2009 vote total comparison of Tehran would be flawed because the 2005 results actually overstated Ahmadinejad's Tehran support. Furthermore, Cole states that Ahmadinejad's unpopularity is due to the economic effects of his policies. Therefore, Cole's analysis isn't merely about a 2005 to 2009 poll comparison but also about analyzing how Ahmadinejad's Tehran popularity has allegedly declined since 2005. --JamesAM (talk) 14:57, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
The upper picture says 633048 (2,08%), the lower one 587913 (1,71%). Looks like the number of counted votes dropped overtime. --Emesik (talk) 11:22, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
The image is "File:FakeResults Iran.jpg" is currently used in the article. There are several reliable sources that have documented the irregularities in the election.
However, is there a reliable source that is using Iranian television reports to claim irregularity. Furthermore, the image is alleging irregularity towards Rezai. However, he has already accepted the results.
Once again, I would like to see reliable sources, and not wikipedians, make allegations of "FakeResults".VRtalk16:39, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
I haven't seen a source that says that, but I'll take you word for it. That still doesn't change the fact that allegation of "fake results" is not coming from a reliable source in this particular case. If it is, then show me the source. Cheers, VRtalk18:47, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
I can't open any of your "Center for women..." links. But if we assume they work, even then its invalid.
The above is a prime example of WP:SYNTH. You have taken two sources, A and B, to say C, namely that the government forged results. Neither A nor B quotes the other source, to say C, that the government forged results. I'll tag this, and shortly remove it thereafter.VRtalk15:43, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
They quote the same source: The National Elections Commission of Iran (one of them quotes them via Iranian state-run
It doesn't count as a reliable source because it's a blog, read WP:SPS. I haven't read any mainstream media article referring to the apparent loss of votes. If this was really an issue I'm sure they'd be all over the screenshots by now. But they aren't, they haven't been mentioned anywhere.
The source is much appreciated though I cannot read Persian and thus cannot verify it. There seems to be a bunch of comments under the item. Tried going through them with Babylon translator to see if any of them elaborated on the missing votes, but the translator sucked too much. The screenshots still don't make any sense to me because 1. Rezai has accepted the results (pointed out by Vice regent above) and 2. No other major news outlet has had even a single remark on this supposedly blatant and in-your-face election fraud.
IMO the screenshot is some sort of mistake or a simple misunderstanding regarding the Iranian election process, but I'm happy that we at least got a source on it now. Malangyar (talk) 20:13, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
Why is it that we do not have results from Lorestan? One would assume that the election results are now available from many sources. Is Lorestan missing every time? CuriousOliver (talk) 21:46, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
Press tv didn't have 'Lorestan' on their page. warning long load times, as they are state owned and I can't find the Interior Ministry webpage, they are the 'most offical' source of the results; such as they are. --PigFlu Oink (talk) 22:15, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
I think it is moi.ir We have already archive the file of province by province results they made available on their site. Please check above. 128.100.5.143 (talk) 00:25, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
Leaked Results which Show Ahmedinejad in Third Place
It seems the screenshots indicate the percentage share, not votes counted. So nothing strange in that the persentage of votes for a candidate falls over time.--MathFacts (talk) 17:10, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
No, they indicate votes counted too which were dropped in 4 hours. Is n't strange that numbers drop in 4 hours?--St. Hubert (talk) 17:18, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
Protests, Arrests, Technology use and TechFirms help (Google Translate support for Persian, Twitter, Facebook in Persian,...)
Protests and Riots
Here's two clips off YouTube showing protesters and some rioting:
I've trimmed it a bit but I'm not opposed to removing all the uncited information. I suspect some of it may simply be from people experiencing these blocks first hand but we should rely on reliable third party sources only. Vyvyan Basterd (talk) 18:47, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
I know some people do not favor certain news orgs, and this article isn't of the best unbiased quality, but it can still be used as a reference to the Facebook section as it mentions the blocking: FoxNews article. BobertWABC (talk) 22:10, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
This does not take into account what PC Mag may have been defining as "supporters" (not just group members). They could be discounting supporters who clearly would not have voting rights in Iran, or are not of Iranian descent, and then making an estimate based on a random sampling. Therefore, I believe the quoted "40,000 supporters" may not be a valid comparison and I will remove that segment. The other problem is that it does not give a time of day in which the 40000 was measured - if it was early or late in the polling, before or after results were announced. 99.141.180.36 (talk) 01:50, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
I would like to thank all the contributors here, esp. during the coverage of protests of the election. I have read your selections quite often so as to stay current as events take place. I write for Associated Content and the only photos I can use in my articles are those posted at WikiMedia Commons. Do not hesitate to provide more of them as I write about 4 articles per day devoted to Iran and the protests. God bless your countrymen. USAdeo (talk) 21:09, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
Twitter
I don't know if this is wikipedia-worthy, but twitter seems to be playing a big role in this. Anybody remember Twitter's role in the Moldovan protests a couple of months ago? I can't find any credible news sources about Twitters role, but here's a couple of blogs: [13], [14]. Twitter reports are also producing a bunch of unconfirmed points that have not made any reliable sources yet: Mouassavi arrested, Khatami under house arrest, and more. Obviously until these points are reported by a reliable source, we cannot trust them. Bsimmons666 (talk) 21:20, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
I'm wondering where these reports are coming from. NPR is reporting that cell phone and internet services are off line in Tehran and much of the rest of the country... Beeblebrox (talk) 02:42, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
Possibly counterproductive. A reporter looked at 30,000 Iranian accounts and found most can be traced to just five email accounts created on June 13th with half of them using the same profile photo. Another 23 accounts disputing the Iran Election have been listed as spreading misinformation and spamming by Twitter. I feel Twitter can't be classed a reliable. Wayne (talk) 13:15, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
I would be interested in seeing the source of your report On the other hand, I've also seen reports on tech sites that point out how the government has been creating propaganda (albeit badly done) through twitter; I would agree that anything there should be taken with a grain of salt--which many news sources have done (i.e. "these reports cannot be verified"), but some of it is undeniably valid. There's nothing unreliable about simply taking note that the service has been a definite player in a situation where information through more traditional means is being suppressed. Efrafra (talk) 23:01, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
It says: "All three reformist candidates appeared" (at the rally). That's definitely wrong, as only two of the four candidates are described as "reformist". And if indeed also the conservative candidate appeared, then that is worth to be stressed! Harald88 (talk) 21:59, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
Should there be some mention of the fact that British journalists have been kicked out of Iran (http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iebU_3yo583gRL6sLkApYrJREpPA), all other journalists who aren't from Pro-Ahmedinejad regimes have been told to stay indoors and if they leave their hotels they will "no longer be safe" and will probably also be told to leave the country. This all sounds like further censorship after the blocking of vast swathes of the internet, now they are trying to block any reporting of the fact that they are beating, shooting and murdering hundreds of opposition supporters. MattUK (talk) 09:22, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
Photos
This photographer has a bunch of Wikipedia-compatible photographs of the protests, including some of Mousavi with crowds in recent days:
Twitter debacle jeopardised President Barack Obama
This might also be helpful [some external links edited for Wikipedia spam filter] www dawn com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/16-why-us-interference--hs-05 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.71.181.215 (talk) 17:35, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
Protests
The protests are growing. I have received email from groups set up for sharing information about the situation in Iran (It seems that websites are blocked, Internet speed has dropped considerably, ... government is trying to control the situation) that police force has entered some University dormitories in Tehran, like Tehran University. 128.100.5.143 (talk) 23:10, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
It seems the role of twitter and the internet generally in the election aftermath will be worth commenting on; it has affected mainstream media coverage [some external links edited for Wikipedia spam filter] www examiner com/examiner/x-13483-DC-Technology-and-Politics-Examiner~y2009m6d14-How-online-wordofmouth-can-change-mainstream-media-election-coverage see here for example. csloat (talk) 05:38, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
First of all, I'd like to mention that Tatsuma over at Fark.com has been giving very helpful updates throughout this whole situation. [some external links edited for Wikipedia spam filter] www fark com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=4450419#c51929306 Here, for example. A little while ago, he said that "Der Spiegel, based on a Voice of America report, says that 5,000 Hizbullah fighters are currently in Iran masquerading as riot police, confirming the independent reports. Many different independent reports and video point that way. Even in the last hours other independent twitter feeds have declared witnessing thugs beating on people while shouting in Arabic". Original Der Spiegel source here. Esn (talk) 05:29, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
I don't think that Iranian government need more militia, it already has more than it needs to control the situation. There has not been any report of military or Revolutionary Guard Corps being involved, they have used only police. There are also *millions* of registered Basij militia. 128.100.5.143 (talk) 06:15, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
Actually it could be an issue, there are strong elements within the Revolutionary Guard who are loyal to the mullas but despise Ahmedinejad and would love to see him taken down which is why they haven't been deployed, so far only police organisations under "Presidential Control" have been used (secret police and regulars), so the presence of Hezbollah who are able to do some dirty work and then just disappear would be very useful to the Ahmedinejad factions. The big problem for him will be guaranteeing loyalty and people actually being willing to carry out his orders to go and beat and suppress the opposition and that is probably the reason for Hezbollah's presence in Iran. MattUK (talk) 09:02, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
The same job can be done by Basij. One of complaints by Mousavi and Karroubi is that Basij has campaigned for Ahmadinejad. The same complaint was also given in the previous Presidential election. I was at Tehran at the time and saw myself that Basij was campaigning for Ahmadinejad, talking with people on many of main square and trying to convince them to vote for Ahmadinejad not Hashemi. 128.100.5.143 (talk) 22:59, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
It is alpha and is not very good, but it is better than nothing, and they are improving it. Should we mention it in the article? 128.100.5.129 (talk) 04:43, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
Does anyone have counts on how many died in todays' crackdown on protesters? There are videos all over showing people who have been shot/killed by militias but not yet a lot of numbers. Blogs were saying its around 50 dead and hundreds wounded, but its hard to find official sources with Iran blocking the news media. Fuzbaby (talk) 19:35, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
Western public involvement over internet
Apparently, there is a lot of support for the protesters by young Westerners over the internet. For example, Anonymous (group) is helping to organize proxies and such. Internet forums, at least in the US, are far more active in the story than most of the news organizations. Some threads from Fark.com: [some external links edited for Wikipedia spam filter] www fark com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=4449970 most recent, www fark com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=4447848 first thread Esn (talk) 22:04, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
Also, in response to the Iranian attacks on the protesters' information sources, a website was been set up to DDOS pro-Ahmadinejad (and Khamenei?) sites [some external links edited for Wikipedia spam filter] dos-attack blogspot com - removed by Blogspot today at 6:04 PM Eastern Time. Esn (talk) 22:08, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
There should also be some information of the allegations of western government involvement in supporting Mousavi , Most notably Great Britain, The United States and Israel. Obviously allegations by Iran have been made, but it is impossible to say exactly what type of involvement they might have. We do know that in the USA for instance, our congress officially appropriates money to fund "covert actions" against Iran. Here's one story detailing some of those those efforts http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/07/080707fa_fact_hersh24.207.226.224 (talk) 10:32, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
Pro-opposition versus pro-government
The situation in Iran is more complicated than the bipolar categorization into "pro-opposition" and "pro-government" suggests, which is especially indicated by placing Rafsanjani's reaction in the "pro-government" section, even though he is a supporter of Mousavi. CuriousOliver (talk) 12:44, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
I have removed the categories, and organized it by person giving reaction. I think there are several actors in this election, and that it is unfair to group Rezai and Ahmedinejad into the same category, or to show that Rafsanjani is pitted against Ahmedinejad. Also, Khamenei seems to have become more sympathetic towards the reformists (as compared to his "divine assesment" speech), so we also can't categorize him.VRtalk16:42, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
(not really on topic but meh) [some external links edited for Wikipedia spam filter] www PressTV ir (the iranian state run english news site) is down with 'Server is too busy'. I didn't get this error at all on Friday or Saturday (when I would think the server would be even busier) Is anyone else getting this error and is there a way (other website/tool) to determine if a site is actually down of if it is just displaying a null page? --PigFlu Oink (talk) 13:54, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
The server is not legitimately busy. When a webserver is too busy to actually serve the website it's supposed to serve, it will generally just not send anything (such as in the case of a DDoS). In this case, it sends an "error" message. But here's the interesting part; it allows you to download the website "favorite" icon (like Wikipedia's W in the adress bar) from [some external links edited for Wikipedia spam filter] www presstv ir/favicon ico. What does this mean? It means someone cracked the machine and replaced the website with a fake error message. Kari Hazzard (T | C) 14:04, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
I disagree. If a website is dynamic, as a news service website usually is, then pages are not stored but created from a database, which takes time. In this case, it is quite usual for a server to serve an error message if it can not keep up with generating the pages. Loading an icon is not affected, since the icon is stored and requires not processing. I am sure the server faces more requests right now than usual. CuriousOliver (talk) 16:08, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
Or it could be the servers are in Tehran and the Security services are throttling the entire network in an effort to prevent video reports getting out. They might be inadvertantly hurting themselves. --PigFlu Oink (talk) 14:07, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
That could be the case, but the hacker example wouldn't surprise me. Pro-Khameini and pro-Ahmadinejad websites have been reportedly taken down by pro-Mousavi hackers. Kari Hazzard (T | C) 14:22, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
Some Iranians are DDOSing the websites, there is a group on Facebook about it, and mailing groups set up by Iranians for sharing information about the situation have discussed it. Websites of pro-Ahmadinejad newspapers like Keyhan are also DDOSed. 128.100.5.143 (talk) 00:19, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
Even if PressTV results does not contain lorestan, the one released on MOI contains it. One of the editors have archived Province by Province vote. Please check above. 128.100.5.143 (talk) 00:21, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
Reactions: Internal and International (Governments and Organizations)
Mousavi's current position
The sentence "and urged his backers to resist a government based on "lies and dictatorship."" is not correct. Mousavi has called for calm, asking people to do not go to streets for protesting. His election team has also asked people not to trust sources other than statements released by the team which they have stated will be made available on his websites like ghalamnews.ir. [external link edited for Wikipedia spam filter] ghalamnews ir/news-21118.aspx Also the phrase "agoverment based on lies and dictatorship" is not part of recent statement, but taken from one of his campaign speeches. I suggest correcting it. 128.100.5.143 (talk) 01:00, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
Combatant Clergy Association reaction
Combatant Clergy Association (Persian:جامعه روحانیت مبارز) (which is one of most influential conservative parties and most of its members supported Ahmadinejad for presidency, but since its internal procedure needs two-third of members supporting to announce it officially they did not announced it officially) has not stated that the election result is fraud, completely reverse. I think people have mistaken it with Association of Combatant Clerics (مجمع روحانیون مبارز) which is a reformist party. This needs to be corrected. One more thing, Combatant Clergy Association is not headed by Rafsanjani, he is an influential member but not the head. Also Khatami is a member of Association of Combatant Clerics. 142.1.153.49 (talk) 05:11, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
Iranian political reactions
Almost all of stated reactions are from supporters of Mousavi (exception: leader Khamenei and Minister of Interior Sadeg Mahsouli). I think we should also add other reaction, e.g. reactions of head of Parliment, head of Judiciary, important conservative parties, Grand Ayatollahs, important conservative figures like Hadad Adel and Ahmad Tavakkoli, ... to avoid begin one-sided. 142.1.153.49 (talk) 05:25, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
"Ahmadinejad's official victory was hailed by Syria, which maintains close relations with Iran, and by Gazan ruling militant group Hamas, which is viewed by many as an Islamic Republic proxy." This part about Syria seems so biased. I think we should leave only the official reaction of Syria and remove the part about Hamas and proxy. Some could argue that Canada is a proxy of the United States so it's opinion has no value. --zorxd (talk) 14:48, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
Good point. i also noticed that the entry on the US reaction says nothing about the fact that the United States together with the United Kingdom played a major role in successfully overthrowing the democratically elected government of Iran. Rather than add this sort of context, i removed the point that Syria and Iran have close relations. Readers can look up country articles or CountryX-CountryY relations articles to find more info. Hmmm maybe adding links to these sorts of articles would make sense... Even if many are in rather uncertain states of quality. Boud (talk) 17:02, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
I'd like to point out that it was the Eisenhower Administration that committed Ajax (which makes it long-past distant history without relevance to today), whereas the Hamas-Syria-Iran nexus is something that is the current foreign policy of those three groups and is something directly created/sustained by Ahmadinejad. The Squicks (talk) 19:17, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
Regime change in Iran was part of recent US foreign policy before Obama administration. Bush administration has supported different opposition groups against it, and named Iran in Axis of Evil. So this does not seem to me distant history. 128.100.5.143 (talk) 19:50, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure if that would be a good idea now, with information coming and going out very quickly. A lot of the material there is not even properly referenced.
I'm not sure if it would be a good idea either, being that the international reactions are so closely tied to "results" of the election. Also in the article I notice that there has been a split off into an article "2009 Iranian election protests", I'm not sure that this should have happened, and prehaps should be moved back into the main article as it is intrinsically linked to the election itself, being that if it hadn't been rigged and it was a free and fair election there would be no protests. MattUK (talk) 08:48, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
India's reaction/endorsement. The reference #123(Times Online article) does not reflect this, in fact does not even mention India's reaction. I could not locate India's reaction hence feel this should be removed (all across the page).
Okay ref 123 does mention India's reaction, and I quote, "his re-election was effectively endorsed not just by his hosts but other nations attending, including China, India and Pakistan."
Why is Egypt fully green on the map? The page only lists the opinion of the Muslim Brotherhood, not the Egyptian government. 75.82.129.74 (talk) 03:02, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
Misc
Amount of conservetive/moderate/reformist support in Iran
Alvin Richman and David B. Nolle and Elaine El Assal, "Iranian Public Is Not Monolithic: Iranians Divide Over Their Government But Unite on Forgoing Nuclear Weapons", May 18, 2009
[external link edited for Wikipedia spam filter] www worldpublicopinion org/pipa/articles/brmiddleeastnafricara/609.php?nid=&id=&pnt=609&lb=brme
I think we can use this information:
Conservatives: 45% Moderates: 24% Reformists: 18% No Opinion: 13%
"In WPO’s January 2008 survey, we found that Conservatives comprised 45 percent of the total (N = approx. 319), compared to 24 percent for Moderates (N = approx. 168) and 18 percent for Reformers (N = approx. 124).4 The remaining 13 percent fell into a non-substantive, largely “no opinion” group (N = approx. 99). Demographically, Moderates and Reformers tend to be younger, better educated, have higher incomes, and live in larger urban areas than do Conservatives." Page 2
Support for Ahmadinejad between:
Conservatives: 85% Moderates: 60% Reformists: 35%
Overall: 66%
"Iranian President Ahmadinejad – The divergence among the three groups – Conservatives, Moderates and Reformers -- on rating Iran’s president is one of the largest in this study, approaching the differences found on the general measures of regime support discussed above. For example, 85 percent of Conservatives approved the way President Ahmadinejad was “handling his job,” compared to 60 percent of Moderates and 35 percent of Reformers. At the time of the WPO survey in early 2008 the number of Conservatives (45%) more than matched the number of Moderates and Reformers combined (42%). Thus, approval of President Ahmadinejad among the total Iranian public (66%) was heavily influenced by his very positive support among Conservatives." Page 4 128.100.5.143 (talk) 04:02, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
Ahmadinejad campaign site external link
BTW - we seem to be missing an external link to Ahmadinejad's campaign site, if he has one. Any recommendations on what the most obvious link would be? Boud (talk) 19:35, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
Ahmadinejad is claiming that he is not running a campaign. People themselves are campaigning for him, therefore he does not have an official website. But there is a groups which organizes these "people's campaign" unofficially. http://dolateyar.ir/ I am adding it to external links. 128.100.5.135 (talk) 01:24, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
US presidential election system is irrelevant to this article
Just in case some edits like this and this one by someone who gave the reason "Like many US presidential articles, the infobox should just have the main candidates and not the independents who got less than 10% of the vote" are repeated, the reason for not accepting these edits is that this election concerns Iran, not the United States, and this is not USA.wikipedia.org. Boud (talk) 17:16, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
'and other western based media' ['and other western-based media']
'and urged his suppoters to fight the decision, without committing acts of violence' [change 'suppoters' to 'supporters', and remove the comma here, because the subordinate clause beginning with 'without' actually belongs closely with 'to fight the decision' and not with 'urged', as the comma would suggest]
'on 16 June the Guardian Council announced it will recount the vote' ['will' should be 'would': sequence of tenses]
Done by User:JamesAM and me. Mushroom (Talk) 19:22, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
Not done: That looks like something that might interest the reader, but inserting it in the copy seems awkward; it seems more like an external link. If you agree, could you supply a subsection (new or existing) and text to display. The other way to include your work would be to take one or two of the visualizations and add them as graphics. If that makes more sense to you, go ahead and upload them, then suggest where to insert them. Cheers, Celestra (talk) 13:39, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
Boud (talk) 15:54, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
