Hard evidence of rigged Iranian election is lacking

WASHINGTON — Millions of handwritten paper ballots were counted within hours. The challenger riding a surge of momentum and popular enthusiasm lost in a landslide. Other opposition candidates did poorly even in their home provinces.

There are many signs of manipulation or outright fraud in Iran’s disputed election results, according to pollsters and election experts, but the case for a rigged outcome is far from ironclad, making it difficult for the U. S. and other Western powers to denounce the results as unacceptable.

There is also evidence that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the incumbent president deeply disliked in the West for his promotion of Iran’s nuclear program and his anti-Israeli rhetoric, simply won a commanding victory.

Some analysts have suggested that the attention given the protests and anger in Tehran — where Western media outlets are concentrated — gives a misleading picture of the Iranian electorate. The official results show that the leading challenger, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, was competitive in Tehran, losing by 52 percent to 46 percent, while trailing badly outside the capital.

“You could get more of an impression of a horse race in Tehran,” said Flynt Leverett of the New America Foundation, who said Ahmadinejad is a “really good campaigner” who blunted Mousavi’s momentum in their final debate.

“There are suspicious elements here, but there’s no solid evidence of fraud,” said Walter Mebane Jr., a University of Michigan professor of political science and statistics and an expert on detecting electoral fraud.

There were few independent polls taken before the election and no exit polls afterward, making it extremely difficult to assess the accuracy of the vote counts announced by the government.

“The results definitely look suspicious, but you need hard evidence to know the election was cooked,” said Joe Lenski, co-founder and executive vice president of Edison Research. “We may never find hard evidence here.”