es.
These measures include closing some 100 reformist newspapers over the past four years; imprisoning journalists and bloggers for criticizing the regime; charging reformists who called for renewing relations with the U.S. with treason; and disqualifying reformist candidates – some in office at the time – from running in elections. As a result, the various students’ and intellectuals’ organizations announced that they would boycott the presidential elections.
In the February 2003 municipal authority elections, and in the February 2004 elections for the Seventh Majlis, voter turnout was only about 50%. Reform-minded voters stayed away from the polls because of Iran ‘s Guardian Council’s mass disqualification of reformist candidates, and also following the conservatives’ judicial measures against Tehran ‘s mayors.
On the question of electoral fraud:
1) On the morning of June 18, the day after the first round of voting, the conservative daily Kayhan (which is close to Iranian Leader Khamenei) published the results of the very close race between Ahmadi-Nejad and Karroubi – even though the outcome of the count was not officially released until that evening. How did Kayhan know in advance?
2) Ahmadi-Nejad jumped from 5.7 million votes in the first round to over 17 million in the second round – a jump that seems suspicious.
3) The number of votes cast for Ahmadi-Nejad in the second round (17 million) exceeded (by nearly 6 million) the total number of votes (11.4 million) cast by the entire conservative camp.
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