> People all over the place vote by
> ideology, region, ethnicity, and such,
Except when they don't. We now have a nice mocha-colored president here in the enlightened modern USA, and I'm old enough to remember when it was unthinkable that we might have a Catholic president.
> and why should Iranians be any
> different?
One thing we can say for sure is that Iranian elections are quite different from ours. Ours are quite ossified and sclerotic -- what civics teachers and NY Times editorialists call a "stable" political order. Things seem to be a lot looser in the IRI -- which is, after all, only thirty years old. They haven't even evolved an institutionalized political duopoly yet, the poor backward creatures.
> Are Iranians too
> exotic to behave like people elsewhere?
You mean, like people in, erm, New Jersey or Oklahoma? Their recent experience has been a little different.
Personally, I think New Jersey is extremely exotic.
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Michael Smith mjs at smithbowen.net http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org