Iran to Recount Some Votes

FARNAZ FASSIHI ROSHANAK TAGHAVI

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A video grab from official Iranian state television shows supporters of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rallying in central Tehran on Tuesday.

TEHRAN -- Iran's Guardian Council said Tuesday it is prepared to recount specific ballot boxes from the disputed election, a day after the largest demonstration since the Iranian revolution ended in gunfire.

The offer by the Guardian Council for a targeted tally -- from specific voting sites where fraud has been alleged -- is the first direct action by authorities to address claims of irregularities by opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But it also offers further hints that the non-elected ruling clerics are seeking to calm the protest anger and keep the dissent from spreading into their rarified world.

It wasn't immediately clear when such a count could begin or how many voting sites would be included.

Earlier, state media reported that seven people died the previous day in protest-related violence.

In downtown Tehran, thousands of people gathered Tuesday in a state-organized rally that Iran's state media said was designed to demand punishment for the rioters from Monday's clashes, the Associated Press reported. While there had been reports earlier of another rally Tuesday of supporters of reformist challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi, possibly setting the stage for violent clashes, Mr. Moussavi, in a message posted on his Web site, said he would not be attending any rally and asked his supporters to "not fall in the trap of street riots" and "exercise self-restraint."

After images were shown around the world of mass protests and violence following the disputed election, the government on Tuesday cracked down on journalists, AP reported. Authorities restricted many journalists, including Iranians working for foreign media from reporting on the streets, and said they could only work from their offices, conducting telephone interviews and monitoring official sources such as state television.

A spokesman for the Guardian Council, Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, was quoted on state television as saying the recount would be limited to voting sites where candidates claim irregularities took place. There was no immediate word from Mr. Mousavi on the announcement, but he said Monday he wasn't hopeful that the council would address his charges because he believes they are not neutral and have already indicated support for Mr. Ahmadinejad.

The 12-member Guardian Council includes clerics and experts in Islamic law. Its role includes certifying election results, but nullifying an election would be an unprecedented step. Mr. Kadkhodaei didn't rule out the possibility of canceling the results, saying that is within the council's powers.

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Abedin Taherkenareh/European Pressphoto Agency

Supporters of opposition leader Mir Hossein Moussavi marched in the streets of Tehran Monday.

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The council is closely allied with Iran's ruling cleric, who on Monday ordered an investigation into allegations of fraud in the presidential election. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's call hedged his strong backing of the result of Friday's vote. It appeared to be in response to the violent protests, and suggested growing unease among the clerics who sit atop Iran's complex power structure.

In the past few days, a number of senior clerics have met with Mr. Khamenei or written to him, urging him to intervene, according to a series of public letters from the clerics. One grand ayatollah, one of the highest-ranking clerics, issued a religious order demanding his followers not cooperate with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government.

Demonstrators, many wearing the green of defeated challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi's campaign, defied a ban on gathering and marched peacefully Monday on Enghelab Street, the center of the 1979 revolutionary demonstrations. The sea of people, estimated by several news agencies in the hundreds of thousands, stretched more than 5.5 miles.

Mr. Mousavi made brief remarks at the edge of the gathering, saying he would welcome a new vote. Though he had said Sunday he was under house arrest, authorities let him to travel. It is unclear whether the house arrest was lifted. After he spoke, crowds chanted, "Mousavi, Karroubi, Unity," referring to Mr. Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, a reformist cleric who also lost in the election.

After a weekend of violent confrontation between the security services and protesters, Iranian riot police stood by during Monday's demonstration. They held their shields at their sides, and watched the protests without interfering. The Basij paramilitary force, armed plainclothes militia, were absent for most the day.

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Associated Press

TEHRAN IN CRISIS: Demonstrators carry a man allegedly shot by pro-government militia near a rally protesting the result of last week's election.

The demonstration began at 4 p.m. and lasted more than five hours, blocking all traffic on the seven-lane road and on many of the side streets around it.

At around 8 p.m., gunshots rang near a compound that belonged to Basij militia near Azadi Square. A scuffle broke out between the Basij and young male demonstrators. The militia opened fire and wounded several and appeared to kill one, according to video footage. The limp body of the apparently dead man was carried by others, blood dripping on his white shirt as demonstrators shouted, "I will kill the one who killed my brother."

A group of demonstrators with fuel canisters attempted to set fire to the compound and burned a motorcycle that belonged to the Basij, according to the Associated Press. Black smoke billowed into the air as the crowd dispersed. As some in the crowd attempted to storm the building, people inside could be seen firing directly at the demonstrators at the northern edge of the square, away from the heart of the demonstration, according to the AP.

Separately, a student-run news service reported that five students -- two women and three men -- were killed Sunday night in dormitory raids by Basij forces at Tehran University. That report couldn't be independently verified.

The images from the protests and allegations of election fraud drew stronger reactions around the world Monday, after an initially muted response from the West. Late Monday afternoon, President Barack Obama said he was "deeply troubled" by the violence. "The democratic process, free speech, the ability of people to peacefully dissent -- all those are universal values and need to be respected," he said.

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Demonstrators pledged to continue taking to the streets until the government heeds their demands. Another rally was scheduled for Tuesday at Tehran's Vali Asr Square. Protesters informed one another about the rally by shouting and holding up signs.

The violence ended a day of mostly peaceful protests. During the demonstration, the crowd at times chanted slogans, raising their voices as helicopters swooped overhead. Protesters also appeared eager to avoid confrontation, and hushed down inflammatory slogans, urging the crowd instead to raise their hands in a V-sign for peace.

A 73-year-old shopkeeper said he walked more than six miles to the demonstration. "I have only ever voted twice, once at the beginning of the revolution...and once for Mousavi," he said. "Today was wonderful. Tomorrow will be even better."

Mr. Mousavi has alleged massive vote rigging. He won 34% of the votes cast, to Mr. Ahmadinejad's 63%, according to Iran's Interior Ministry. Mr. Ahmadinejad has said the vote was free and fair.

Mr. Mousavi told the crowd on Monday his solution was "canceling the result of this disputed election," according to the AP, adding, "This will have the least cost for our nation. Otherwise, nothing will remain of people's trust in the government and ruling system."

Mr. Karroubi, the other defeated challenger, also appeared in public, standing on the roof of his car and waving at supporters. Former President Mohamad Khatami also drove through the crowd but didn't speak. As the motorcades passed, demonstrators rushed to catch a glimpse and a photo and cheered.

A young cleric from the Shiite holy city of Qom addressed the crowd. "I have come to bring you a message from Qom," he said. "Without a doubt, all clerical scholars are against the current situation. The only person acceptable to them is Mr. Mousavi, they have rejected Mr. Ahmadinejad's request to meet them in the past two days."

Earlier Monday, state media quoted Mr. Khamenei as appealing to opposition leaders for calm. State media also reported that Mr. Khamenei met with Mr. Mousavi late Sunday and urged him to pursue his allegations of voting irregularities through legal means. "Definitely, in this election, complaints should be followed through legal channels," Mr. Khamenei was quoted as saying after his meeting with Mr. Mousavi. State media said Mr. Khamenei asked the Guardian Council, the top supervisory board of senior clerics, to review Mr. Mousavi's allegations.

The 12-member council of clerics and scholars is required to approve elections, and technically has the power to nullify them, though it has never done so before. It is unclear how deeply the council would probe the vote, or what action it could take if it found irregularities.

But it appeared to represent new concern by Mr. Khamenei, who has final say on all matters of state. The supreme leader endorsed Mr. Ahmadinejad's landslide victory over the weekend, saying it was a "divine assessment." Since late Friday, when preliminary results first showed Mr. Ahmadinejad far ahead of his challengers, the regime appeared to back his victory with the full force of Iran's state media and security apparatus. State media trumpeted the apparent victory, hours before official results were announced.

Whether Mr. Ahmadinejad continues as president -- a point that some say is an open question if demonstrations persist -- his administration and the religious leaders who back it have been irreparably weakened, said Elliott Abrams, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Azadi Square: After a large protest at the square, gunmen fire on opposition protestors nearby, killing at least one person (Mon.)

Motahari Avenue: Three public buses are set afire (Sat.)

Tehran University: Protesters clash with police (Sun.)

Other events:

Hafteh Tir Square: Several hundred people march, shouting 'God is Great' (Sat.)

Mellat Park area: Pedestrian bridge set ablaze (Sun.)

Mohseni Square: Three buildings are burned down (Sun.)

Along Vali Asr Avenue: Burned campaign posters litter street. Trans bins set ablaze (Sun.)

"These are the largest demonstrations since the fall of the Shah in 1979," Mr. Abrams said. For millions of Iranians, the result "has delegitimized this regime."

Police and Iran's Basij militia have deployed brutal force in the past two days, beating back crowds with batons and chains. On Sunday night, Basij militia raided the dormitory of Tehran University in the middle of the night beating students and ransacking their rooms. According to students, gunshot was exchanged and 15 students were seriously injured.

At the march Monday, demonstrators called on the international community to pressure Iran and not accept Mr. Ahmadinejad's reelection. They held up handwritten placards in Farsi and English saying, "Where is my vote?" and "I wrote Mousavi, they read Ahmadinejad," and "The U.N. is responsible if it accepts the election result."

"I came because I want to make sure Iran is not viewed as a terrorist state and is run by a respected politician," said Sassan Behzadi, 47, a computer engineer from northern Tehran. "I knew that if I came I could make a difference."

A 23-year-old Ahmadinejad supporter near the gathering said she was sympathetic to the young Mousavi supporters. But said they should stop protesting to prevent more violence. "The government has chosen Ahmadinejad," she said. "There is no use fighting it and getting young people killed."

Minnesota's Missing Votes

Some Senate absentee ballots are more equal than others.

Meanwhile, back in the Minnesota Senate recount, the three-judge panel reviewing the race has declared Democrat Al Franken the winner. Republican Norm Coleman intends to appeal to the state's Supreme Court, while Democrats and the press corps pressure him to surrender. We hope Mr. Coleman keeps fighting, because the outcome so far hangs on the fact that some votes have been counted differently from others.

Even after the recount and panel-findings, the 312-vote margin separating the two men equals about .01% of the 2.9 million votes cast. Even without any irregularities, this is as close to a "tie" as it gets. And there have been plenty of irregularities. By the end of the recount, the state was awash with evidence of duplicate ballot counting, newly discovered ballots, missing ballots, illegal voting, and wildly diverse standards as to which votes were counted. Any one of these issues was enough to throw the outcome into doubt. Combined, they created a taint more worthy of New Jersey than Minnesota.

The Coleman camp pushed for resolution of these problems during the recount, but it was stymied by a state canvassing board that cared more about preserving its "Minnesota nice" reputation than about making tough calls. The state Supreme Court also punted difficult questions. The mess then landed with the three-judge panel overseeing Mr. Coleman's contest trial, a panel that seemed out of its depth.

Case in point: the panel's dismal handling of absentee ballots. Early in the recount, the Franken team howled that some absentee votes had been erroneously rejected by local officials. We warned at the time that this was dangerous territory, designed to pressure election officials into accepting rejected ballots after the fact.

Yet instead of shutting this Franken request down, or early on issuing a clear set of rules as to which absentees were valid, the state Supreme Court and the canvassing board oversaw a haphazard process by which some counties submitted new batches to be included in the tally, while other counties did not. The resulting additional 933 ballots were largely responsible for Mr. Franken's narrow lead.

During the contest trial, the Coleman team presented evidence of a further 6,500 absentees that it felt deserved to be included under the process that had produced the prior 933. The three judges then finally defined what constituted a "legal" absentee ballot. Countable ballots, for instance, had to contain the signature of the voter, complete registration information, and proper witness credentials.

But the panel only applied these standards going forward, severely reducing the universe of additional absentees that the Coleman team could hope to have included. In the end, the three judges allowed only about 350 additional absentees to be counted. The panel also did nothing about the hundreds, possibly thousands, of absentees that have already been legally included, yet are now "illegal" according to the panel's own ex-post definition.

If all this sounds familiar, think Florida 2000. In that Presidential recount, officials couldn't decide what counted as a legal vote, and so different counties used different standards. The Florida Supreme Court made things worse by changing the rules after the fact. In Bush v. Gore, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that this violated Constitutional principles of equal protection and due process, which require that every vote be accorded equal weight.

This will be a basis for Mr. Coleman's appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court. Should that body be reluctant to publicly rebuke their judicial colleagues who sat on the contest panel, Mr. Coleman could also take his appeal to federal court. This could take months.

Another solution is to hold a special Senate election. Minnesota law does not specifically provide for such a runoff. However, the U.S. Constitution's 17th amendment does provide states with a roadmap for filling "vacancies," which might be a legal starting point for a do-over. Even before the shifting standards of the contest trial, the St. Paul Pioneer Press looked at the ballot-counting evidence and called for a revote. It could be that this is where the court case is leading in any event.

Democrats want to portray Mr. Coleman as a sore loser and make the Republican worry that he will ruin his chances for other political office. But Mr. Coleman has a legitimate grievance that not all votes have been treated equally. If the Franken standard of disparate absentee-voter treatment is allowed to stand, every close election will be settled by a legal scramble to change the vote-counting rules after Election Day. Minnesota should take the time to get this one right.

LATICONOMICS

Tuesday, June 16, 2009