Voter Frustration in Iranian Diaspora

Voters in London, New York, and across California are expressing concern and frustration over voting irregularities that they feel may be an orchestrated attempt to invalidate their votes. The problem centers around confusion with the ballot, and also in San Francisco, not enough ballots themselves.

The ballot confusion concerns the box on the ballot asking voters to enter the candidate's code, and the codes that were distributed at the polling stations. In some cases, these codes were not distributed at all. Voters at polling stations in Iran were instructed that to properly fill the ballot, they must write-in the candidate's name, but also write in a box a code that corresponds with each candidate. To vote for Mousavi, voters were told to write his name and enter the code "77." For Ahmadinejad, the code was "44." However, those numbers are not the same as the codes that foreign polling stations were instructing voters to enter. In at least the California and London, voters were told that Mousavi's code was simply "4." Thus, Mousavi voters wrote in his name and entered the number "4" in the code box. To add to the confusion and perhaps credibility to the claim that Mousavi's code was "4," Mousavi was listed as the fourth candidate on the ballot. In New York, the system differed from even that: voters who asked about the box were told to "leave it blank."

This may be an innocent inconsistency and may not matter if the ballots are counted honestly and locally. However, the propensity for ballot-counting fraud exists where a counter can read-in an ambiguity where the voter did not intend. For example, a ballot counter could simply claim that because the code number and the candidate's name do not correspond to those distributed in Iran (and seemingly the standard), they should then be invalidated for being ambiguous or improperly filled. Alternatively, the counter could disingenuously "resolve the ambiguity" by following the code which, not surprisingly, is closer to Ahmadinejad's assigned code of 44. Worse yet, another "4" could simply be added alongside the intended Mousavi vote to make the ballot read: Code 44, which is Ahmadinejad's code. This could hypothetically be a basis upon which to discard the ballot, or count it for whomever the counter chooses.

In New York, voters fared even worse. When asked what the code meant and how to properly fill-in the ballot, voters were told by polling administrators simply to: "leave it blank." The obvious danger here is that the ballot may be, on its face, invalidated for being improperly written. Another obvious concern is that a code that doesn't correspond with the written name may simply be added to the filled-in ballot later, since voters left the box blank.

In San Francisco, many frustrated voters won't even have the chance to fill-in the ballot improperly: they won't get to vote at all. Recently, several of those waiting in line to vote were told that the polling station has run out of ballots. They were told that replacements are being sent, but that there are only 600 and after that, no one else will be able to vote.

Copyright (c) 2009 Tehran Bureau