You guys are assuming that this vote fiddlin' was orchestrated from above, and therefore followed some rational plan. In Russia anyway, this stuff is usually local, organized by the local politicos. You arrange things so that your region votes for the person you think is going to win, because you want to be in favor with the central government. There is no country-wide plan.
--- On Mon, 6/15/09, W. Kiernan <wkiernan at gmail.com> wrote:
> From: W. Kiernan <wkiernan at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Juan Cole: preliminary reactions to the Iranian vote totals
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Monday, June 15, 2009, 6:44 AM
> Eric Beck wrote:
> >
> > Yeah, from what I can tell, the A-man seemed to win
> > more or less on the up and up. Which makes the
> protests
> > even more amazing. Iranians apparently don't buy b.s.
> > pieties about the will of the people being obeyed and
> > the rule of law and all that. If you don't like the
> > results of an election, take to the street, burn
> shit,
> > all that. Good stuff.
>
> I disagree; I guess it's that reported 62% to 34%
> landslide, including majorities for Ahmedinajad even in
> Tehran and Tabriz, which is the source of Iranians's anger,
> because it's so blatantly phony. If the ballot-fixers
> had waited a plausible length of time - long enough to have
> actually counted the votes - and then declared Ahmedinajad
> the victor with, say, 55% overall and less than 50% in a few
> cities, then pro-Mousavi Iranians might have sucked it up
> and conceded, but the two-to-one landslide was too
> unbelievably fake to swallow. But given the choice
> between admitting that their guy and his party weren't
> actually universally beloved and faking up a vote count that
> people might actually believe, their egomania got the better
> of them. You wouldn't catch Karl Rove making such a
> rookie mistake.
>
> yrs wdk
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