Iran Over The Dog

Iranians went to the polls this past weekend to cast ballots in their quadrennial presidential election. The incumbent Ahmadinejad and the challenger Mousavi were in a tight contest for the lead. Expectations were that the two would likely both miss the 50% cut off and enter a runoff election to be held later. Some polls even had the challenger defeating the sitting Iranian president by as much as 15 percentage points.

Instead, Ahmadinejad won by 29% points sparking rioting and protests in Iran decrying electoral fraud and corruption. The Supreme religious ruler in Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei even asked a council to investigate the election results.

There is a right way and a wrong way to go about rigging an election (just ask the Daleys, Bushes, Kennedys, etc.) and there is a wrong way. The right way leads to some disappointment and some raised eyebrows, but perhaps little more. For example, in the 1960 Presidential election, the race between Kennedy and Nixon was tight. In Chicago, boxes and boxes of ballots began coming in favoring Kennedy that the city's political machine magically produced. However, the margin of victory wasn't huge, but Kennedy still "won" Illinois.

To draw an analogy, the Kennedy victory in Illinois was like "accidentally" backing over the dog in the driveway. Sure, you never liked the dog and used to say you wish you never got it, but accidents happen and it is hard to see something so small in the side mirror. The Iranian election is the equivalent to tying the dog up, backing over it three times, calling the family out to the front yard and throwing a live grenade at it, then walking over to your children and saying, "daddy is sorry, it all happened so fast there was nothing I could do, scruffy got loose."

Anyways, in future news, Iran has a coup.