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Sham Elections – No. 3

Iran:Preparing the ground for vote rigging and astronomical number-fixings

Attempts by the Iranian regime to threaten or lure people to participate in the elections, as well as astronomical increase in the number of the voter participation and vote rigging that had begun a few days ago, escalated today. The Interior Minister and regime leaders have already declared in the past days that there will be a 65 to 75 percent turnout. They have also prepared the task force to handle the vote rigging to announce such figures which they term “engineering of the elections”. It is a well-known method employed by the Iranian regime that multiplies the actual votes by a certain coefficient announcing a number several times the actual voter turnout.

Khamenei’s ludicrous fatwa that participation in the elections is a religious duty and that blank ballots are religiously forbidden, before all else, indicate regime’s concerns of an extensive boycott by the people.

According to reports received from Tehran and other provinces:

• In many military centers the personnel have been threatened of dire consequences if they do not vote
• In Aslaviah (Busher province-south of Iran) , the workers of phases 17 and 18 have been told that they will be fired if they do not vote. In this region, regime’s elements fill the ballots for the workers
• In many cities, including Mashhad, the revolutionary guards give a list of the candidates to the voters to be written down on the ballots
• There are reports that great numbers of birth certificates and national ID cards have been bought by regime’s elements, especially the IRGC. For example, in Esfahan each birth certificate is sold for 800000 rials
• In many polling stations free launch or money is given out to encourage the poor to come and vote

Meanwhile, the Iranian regime dispatches crowds to some polling stations in Tehran and large cities to be interpreted as a show of good voter turnout to be shown in films and pictures, especially by foreign reporters. In streets and districts in central Tehran polling stations have been cut down to create larger crowds in the remaining ones. Meanwhile, reports from Tehran indicate that many polling stations have few voters and the number of revolutionary guards and security personnel outnumber the voters.