Iran's Electoral Mess

I titled this post Iran's Electoral Mess instead of Iran's Electoral Fraud for a couple of reasons.

First, while there is a strong possibility that the outcome of the election is the result of fraud, there is also the possibility that it does the reflect the will of the Iranian people. On this point, read the following post from the always excellent fivethirtyeight.com

Having said that, there is mounting evidence that the outcome of the election has nothing to do with the will of the electorate. To further explore this second possibility, please read Iran Does Have Some Fishy Numbers, once again from the peerless folks at fivethirtyeight.com.

If the second scenario is true, then I will paraphrase what I have read this weekend on a website (sorry, I don't remember which one--but it may have been the Huffington Post). An Iranian girl pleaded with the foreign media not to call what happened in Iran "electoral fraud" because, she said, that expression does not render justice to what she believes to be happening in Iran: a true coup.

If you are interested, you should also read Is Khamenei Vulnerable?, from Time magazine.