Saturday, June 20, 2009

About that ballot recount offer: a fig leaf for a redo?

Iran's Guardian Council's announcement that it would recount 10% of the election ballots was universally ignored as an empty gesture. And so it surely is. Still, today's PressTV report includes a detail that makes the proposed recount at least theoretically significant: the 10% would be chosen randomly:
The Council has said it is ready to recount a random 10 percent of the ballot boxes in the last Friday's presidential election.

"Although the Guardian Council is not legally obliged ... we are ready to recount 10 percent of the (ballot) boxes randomly in the presence of representatives of the candidates," the electoral watchdog's spokesman, Abbas-Ali Kadkhodayi said on Saturday.
One must assume that the "random" selection would also be rigged. If there were away to verify that it was not, however, the results could be significant. It could even provide a fig leaf for Khamenei to walk back his endorsement of the results.

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