that Ahmadinejad stole Iran's 2009 presidential election -- or, for that matter, that any fraud at all occurred. The second point is important because many commentators have grudgingly accepted Ahmadinejad's legitimacy only because his margin was large enough that they believe he would have won even without cheating. Nearly as telling, there appears to have been no serious effort by Mousavi or his supporters to find such evidence. . . . Nor have independent critics maintained their initial enthusiasm. The Chatham House Preliminary Analysis never advanced beyond its self-described "preliminary" stage, despite the author's own suggestion that his brief analysis "be followed up should the fully disaggregated 'by polling station' data be released during the ongoing dispute." Precisely that data was released just days later, but no "follow up" has appeared. The response of nearly all pro-Mousavi analysts to the published ballot-box data has been largely the same: silence. Statisticians such as Roukema, Beber and Scacco appear to have ignored it entirely. Even the few who have examined ballot-box-level data -- Professor Mebane, for example -- have overlooked or ignored its real significance. For the first time ever in an Iranian presidential election, it was a simple matter to find evidence of vote-count fraud: just compare the Interior Ministry count with the field count approved by a Mousavi observer, for any ballot box or for all of them. It is fair to ask why no one has done this, or why they have not published their findings if they have.
Despite the absence of evidence -- or perhaps because of it -- Mousavi's demand has never changed: Don't investigate the election; just toss it out and do it over. One wonders how Americans would have reacted if Al Gore had demanded this in 2000. Mousavi has never explained what would happen if a second election were held and it yielded the same result. Would he demand another do-over, and then another, until Iran's voters get it right? Even his most ardent supporters eventually would insist on evidence. If eventually, why not now? It is not fair to the 24 million Iranians who appear to have voted for Ahmadinejad -- nor is it democratic -- for a government to "compromise" with a defeated candidate by nullifying an election without a sound basis for doing so. The loser has a right to complain about an unfair election, but the winner, and those who voted for him, have an equal right to insist that a valid election be respected. One side will always be disappointed with an election result -- but that is democracy, not fraud. Fraud requires evidence, not merely surprise, disappointment and suspicion.
All of this matters outside Iran as well. One suspects that Western leaders acknowledge Ahmadinejad's legitimacy when they talk privately with their foreign counterparts, but many of them posture in public. Even those officials who have been comparatively restrained in their public statements on the election . . . welcome support from election-doubters for confrontational stances they take toward Iran on other grounds. Most Western media outlets routinely refer to the election as tainted, and many writers insist that policy toward Iran must reflect this. Those who disagree are often described as regime apologists, or naïve at best. But they are merely accepting the election results. It is time others did too.
http://brillwebsite.com/writings/iran2009election.html
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