100-percent plus vote in IranElection would be fraud

Supposedly, more than 100 percent of those eligible to vote actually are recorded as voting in 50 Iranian cities, according to Iranian government TV.

Of course, Council of Guardians Spokesman Abbas-Ali Kadkhodaei said it was “only” 50 cities after claims of overvotes in as many as 170 cities.

That said, I know nothing about PressTV’s reliability, nor about the reliability of this particular story, as I started this post.

However, the New York Times confirms the story:

Serious new questions about the vote’s integrity were raised outside of Iran. Chatham House, a London-based research organization, released a study done with the University of St. Andrews challenging theIranian government’s results, based on a comparison with the 2005 elections as well as Iran’s own census data.

The study showed, for example, that in two provinces where Mr. Ahmadinejad won a week ago, a turnout of more than 100 percent was recorded.

The study also showed that in a third of all provinces, the official results, if true, would have required that Mr. Ahmadinejad win not only all conservative voters and all former centrist voters and all new voters, but up to 44 percent of formerly reformist voters.

If we are talking about fraud, then, who started it? Khamenei alone? Khamenei with Ahmadinejad? Select members of the Council of Guardians?

And, since, per Wiki, PressTV is government-funded, owned by the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, press censorship inside Iran is obviously NOT total. Or, that close to it yet.