SATURDAY: June 13, 2009 - Even the victors don't celebrate

The soonest I could get to a TV was around 3:45 AM on Saturday, less than four hours after polls closed. The efficiency of the Iranian government absolutely amazed me. First, more than 40 million paper ballots were cast. The authorities did not allow the ballots to be counted on site - instead all of the votes, from all 45,000 polling stations stretching across a land larger than Alaska, were transported from each station to the Interior Ministry, as ordered in an unprecedented move by its head, a multimillionaire ally of Ahmadinejad (http://bit.ly/19sxJO for original article).

On Election Night, we were directly facing a polling station, yeah, we just "happened" to be facing it. Polls were originally supposed to close at 8PM; there were still too many people in line so it was extended to 10PM; again, that was not going to get through the line, so it was extended a second time until midnight. I guess the polling station we witnessed ran out of ballots for it closed an hour early, with people still in line.

Returning to the question of efficiency, the Iranians can count. Granted, they are amazing money counters, but still. Who can possibly count 40 million votes in less then three and one half hours. It boggles my mind: it took Minnesota eight months to count the Franken/Coleman votes, all 2.5 million of them. How can the Iranians count so much faster? In Minnesota they average about 312,500 votes that they can count in a single month: Iran, on the other hand, manages around 11.5 million votes per hour! Now that's what I'm talking about. I'm sure that the government response to voter fraud accusations included the procedure so that other countries can learn from it because its probably not fraudulent, but damn, it is a wee bit too freaky for my taste! I mean, that is just too damn fast, right?

The first shot of the posted video was shot at 3:43 AM on Saturday morning ~ at that point Ahmadinejad was in front of Mousavi, 66% to 31%. Less then twelve hours later, the final result was announced with Ahmadi winning handsomely - he was on a role. In the first round of his first campaign, in 2005, he won less then 20% when 63% came out to vote. In the runoff, again in 2005, when less then 48% came out to vote, he won around 61% of the vote. In 2009, when almost 85% came out to vote, which should have helped Mousavi more than Ahmadi, the latter actually increased his performance to 66%, er, the latter 63%.

I only had one question: why were there so few people that were happy? I mean, its more like a mourning period than a celebration. To have seen the tens of thousands of Mousavi supporters in the week before Election Day, and clearly there are twice as many Ahmadi supporters, but were are they? Eating potatoe pies or what?

We did hear of violence and death in Tehran. We didn't see any where we were ~ but on each street corner was one person by themselves holding the V sign with their fingers or wearing a small green ribbon. If there were more than one, trouble would have come their way. I wanted to cross the river to the Mousavi side but someone thought it best if I stayed in the dark shadows ~ he wasn't sure if it would be safe for me with the Ahmadi supporters. I thought to myself I can take on 20 people by myself ~ but tens of thousands, that could have been a very serious problem.

NOTE: as with the prior two video clips, music has been added. Song info will be coming soon.