That’s No Way To Steal An Election

The first example that comes to mind is the 1956 “election” which was supposed to give Ngo Dinh Diem legitimacy as the president of an independent South Vietnam. This was after Diem and the US had basically washed out the Geneva agreement to have a referendum on unification of the country in 1956. In any event, Diem insisted on receiving upwards of 90% of the vote, even against the advice of his CIA advisers. There were many reasons the Diem regime lacked legitimacy, but the obviously rigged election at the start was a major factor in his inability to ever rally a substantial number of Vietnamese to his cause.

In the Iranian case, I find it not so obvious that Ahmadinejad is the regime that risks being thrown over. As far as I can tell, the regime are the unelected higher religious figures, and they could live with both Ahmadinejad or his opponents, or they would not have allowed them to run.

If the election was rigged, then it may indeed have been rigged at the last minute. According to some commentators on the developing situation, the clerical regime were reconciled to a loss for Ahmadinejad, but his supporters within certain sectors of the military effectively forced them to pick a side by taking the first steps toward a coup. So the clerics, the regime proper as Zamfir says, may be reacting to events rather than calling the shots. Perhaps they would rather help to rig an election in a fairly cack-handed manner rather than risk a coup and civil conflict that could paralyse the country and fatally undermine their position.

See:
http://www.progressiverealist.org/blogpost/are-we-witnessing-military-coup-iran

Hmmm…in the USA, there’s histories of districts where rigging was the norm. What’s odd is that it was widely assumed that the elections were rigged, yet they were still held. In Iran, the crackdown seems to have been planned before the election; something this large isn’t organized overnight. Whoever has done it seems to be willing to attack foreign nationals, too, which is odd.

I wonder if China has a clawed foot in the matter?

Here’s a question that maybe people can answer: what’s the history of rigged elections? Are they mostly rigged well in advance, or do those in power do something crude and last-minute when they realize, to their surprise, that they are actually in danger of losing?

At least in the American context, I would say that stolen elections are often last-minute, when the vote seems to be getting closer than was expected, and that often you get stealing on both sides (in the U.S case, think of the 1960 presidential election in Illinois where Daley’s Chicago machine and the Republican downstate machine were both stealing votes). A good example would be LBJ’s first two runs for Senate, where in the first election, he foolishly thought he was too far ahead and released his counties’ vote totals, whereupon his opponent simply stole enough vote in the remaining counties to erase his margin; in the second election, LBJ was fighting down to the wire, and actually kidnapped a couple boxes of votes to make sure he won by a couple hundred votes.

One hypothesis is that the religious establishment decided it had to be massive rigging because a “close” outcome would be more likely to precipitate a “Green Revolution”. With Fox News doing extreme weather and crime stories yesterday, I wonder if they read at least part of their opposition correctly.

It would be wise not to assume a greater degree of coherence, coordination, or competence within the Iranian government than actually exists.

I would distinguish between rigged elections, in which there is never any real pretense of counting actual votes, and stolen elections, in which actual votes form a substantial part of the final official totals.

The former, in places like the Republic of Vietnam (cited above), Communist Eastern Europe “back in the day,” North Korea, and certain African countries, often wind up with ridiculous margins of victory, with the ruling party collecting 90% of the vote of more. These are well-prepared in advance, and lack all credibility.

The latter are more interesting, in that a ruling party *believes* that it is popular enough to win a genuinely free – well, pretty nearly free – election, and thus give democratic legitimacy, both internal and external, to its ongoing rule. It is when this belief proves unsound that there are late, improvisational attempts to steal the election, e.g., the “snap election” in the Philippines in 1986, or the election in Burma (Myanmar) in 1990. In the former case Marcos attempted to steal the count, but was in the event overthrown by a “People Power” revolution; in the latter, the ruling junta, having lost the election, simply suspended the results indefinitely. (To this day.)

My assumption in both of these cases is that authoritarian rulers, by their nature, tend to get a blinkered view of reality, since those around them have learned over the years not to tell them bad news. Surrounded by flatterers, they simply misjudge how the populace as a whole views them and thus, if they wish to retain power, may have to scramble to steal elections they had thought they could win “legitimately” (e.g., with only such standard “dirty tricks” as harassing the opposition in court, breaking up their rallies, spending much more on campaign advertising, bribing more voters, intimidating opposition voters, &c.).

Whether this applies to Iran today, I do not know. But you asked for the history of rigged/stolen elections, and this is my contribution to that history.

Although Mikhail is being flip, I think he has a point. Elections that have been stolen well are probably generally perceived not to have been stolen (one could even say this is a key part of the definition of “well” in this context), and it is hard to estimate how large a portion of “legitimate” elections they might constitute. I would guess not huge, but perhaps more than generally assumed.

John, I guess what happened is that the real power was perfectly fine with either of the outcomes, then realized the cat of emotion was out of the bag, wanted to avoid the 2nd round at all costs, needed somebody to win with over 50% and finally thought that the public uproar would be more damaging if Ahmadinejad won. Could have worked (as it is far from certain the other guy actually would have won a non-rigged election) until a lesser Ayatollah said: “Let’s be on the safe side & give the winner 60%. That’ll shut ’em up.” The lesser Ayatollah can now forget all of his dreams of becoming big Ayatollah & also the Iranians know that they’re closer to North Korea than they imagined.

Juan Cole thinks they simply didn’t expect to lose and thus were not prepared for that eventuality.

Sock Puppet @16:

In addition, during the attempted coup in the USSR in 1991, the commander of the Soviet Strategic Missile Command put all missiles under his command into transit mode, ie, being moved from place to place, a mode that a proportion of missiles are always in, as a precaution against a foreign anti-missile attack. This effectively placed all ICBMs out of use by the coup-leaders. The only people who knew this were himself, his direct staff, and the Government of the USA, since they could observe the missile transit movements via satellite and spy plane. The USA interpreted his action – correctly – as a signal to the USA from the Soviet SSM that the SSM was not in favour of the coup. This allowed the Bush 41 administration, knowing there was high-level opposition inside the Soviet military to the coup, to take a less-panicked position than might have been the case otherwise: Bush 41 was remarkably calm in his public responses to the coup.

I’m thinking of the 1988 Mexican elections when “the computers went down” and when they came back on the loser had become the winner.

My understanding is that Mexico is an example where a long tradition of passive rigging of elections collapsed as more flagrant methods became necessary. The more flagrant methods of vote rigging eventually lead to reform.

I had a professor from Nigeria describe his experience in an election where both sides tired to steal the election. He didn’t know until the votes were counted if the ballot stuffing of his favored candidate had been thwarted.

“The more flagrant methods of vote rigging eventually lead to reform.” Except that in Mexico there appears to have been some backsliding.

One of the more petty irritating aspects of the stolen 88 vote is the incessant bullshit about Mexico’s democratization that came along with Nafta. I always found compelling the argument that Nafta was in part an agreement by the US and Mexico to let Mexico actually hold elections. Didn’t work out past the odious Fox, though.

Now in 1952 when Eisenhower won the election, my father was a poll watcher/vote counter. For some reason he took me with him. Now this was in the Ozark hills where there were actually 9 idiots in the county that had voted Republican. After scrapping off all of the pro Republican votes there was a debate and they decided to mark one Republican vote for Eisenhower. The winning argument was that the Republicans would split up over wondering why all the other Republicans voted Democratic.

I’ve never had a bit of respect for voting since. I think you idiots waste your time on voting. It don’t matter who you elect, he/she/it will sell out in two weeks.

Think I’m lying. I broke down and registered and voted for Perot in 1992. Take a look at the stats, a crooked thieving businessman garnered that many votes. Then look at the change in congress in 1994, people wanted change. Every lit two bit twit got elected on reform. Check the donations stats for 1994 and 1995, the reformers followed Newt Gingrich’s advice and collected more bribes than the experienced polls.
Go vote, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. What a waste of time.

You might as well write in Mickey Mouse.

In the Kenyan elections early last year it seems to have been a more last minute scramble i.e. supporting your second hypothesis.

The opposition had won a majority of the seats in the parliamentary elections, and the opposition presidential candidate Odinga was leading strongly in early counts for the presidential election (separately voted on the same day). Then all of a sudden the presidential vote count encountered “delays”, the electoral commission reported back on a Sunday morning that the incumbent (Kibaki) had won and he was sworn in very rapidly (only two hours later as I understand).

The ensuing violence was started off by protests at just how blatant a piece of last minute rigging this was (it escalated for a range of other reasons). Overall seems to have been the ruling party genuinely surprised at how the parliamentary results turned out and having to scramble to respond for the presidential election.

@30, it is not that curious, democracy trumps anti-democracy and anti-democrats are whether they like it or not on the defensive. Even dictators will invoke the voice of the people – although they’ll invariably claim to possess a special conduit by which they hear it. And anybody with the strong belief that her/his specific beliefs are right but somehow difficult to be explained in ways convincing the electorate is prone to explain any vote in ways supporting her or his beliefs. It is a constant source of the most hilarious political statements.

(I’m starting to be convinced I was right in 19)

“The USA interpreted his action – correctly – as a signal to the USA from the Soviet SSM that the SSM was not in favour of the coup. This allowed the Bush 41 administration, knowing there was high-level opposition inside the Soviet military to the coup, to take a less-panicked position than might have been the case otherwise: Bush 41 was remarkably calm in his public responses to the coup.”

Thanks for this detail. IIRC the Soviet Air Force also made it known that they weren’t in favor of the coup. But I was always impressed by how Bush 41 didn’t fuck up in 1991 or in 1989, by being calm and letting the Soviet bloc implode.

Andrew Gumbel’s book Steal This Vote is a good survey of stolen elections.

Unpleasant and patronising though he is, I think Mikhail has a point – certainly about most ICBMs being in silos. Perhaps peter could supply a reference?

‘It is simply not within the bonds of possibility that a regional Opposition candidate goes from 55% to 5% in his own province in just four years.’

‘The Canadian federal election of 1993 (officially, the 35th general election) was held on October 25 of that year to elect members to the Canadian House of Commons of the 35th Parliament of Canada. Fourteen parties competed for the 295 seats in the House at that time. It was one of the most eventful elections in Canada’s history, with more than half of the electorate switching parties from the 1988 election. The Liberals, led by Jean Chrétien, won a strong majority in the House and formed the next government of Canada.

The election was called by the new Progressive Conservative Party leader, Prime Minister Kim Campbell, near the end of her party’s five-year mandate. When she assumed office, the party was deeply unpopular, and was further weakened by the emergence of new parties that were competing for its core supporters. Campbell’s initial efforts helped the party recover somewhat in pre-election polls before the writs were issued. However, this momentum did not last, and the Progressive Conservatives suffered the most lopsided defeat for a governing party at the federal level, losing more than half their vote from 1988 and all but two of their 151 seats’.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_federal_election,_1993

(‘ah yes but the situations weren’t comparable because blah blah blah’).

To absolutely repeat, clearly and as explicitly as possible: I have absolutely no idea whether or not there was voter fraud in the Iranian elections and neither does anybody else contributing to this thread.

Hidari (@41),

(‘ah yes but the situations weren’t comparable because blah blah blah’)

You really don’t know much about Canadian politics, do you?

As a Canadian (who has also lunched with Kim Campbell… she is a smart and very candid woman, but I never voted for her: I generally vote NDP), let me point out the obvious:

1. Kim Campbell was never elected as Prime Minister. She won her party’s leadership convention largely as a reaction to her predecessor’s – and party’s – deep unpopularity. Her stay in office (from assuming her party’s leadership until losing the general election was a grand total of 132 days). And, more importantly…

2. She was not any sort of “ethnic” or (“regional opposition”) candidate (only a Québécois would remotely fit that category in Canada and it often backfires: Stéphane Dion, the last leader of the Liberals, was more popular in Ontario than in Québec).

And, I forgot to mention one more obvious difference: 1993 was the year two genuinely regional opposition parties emerged in Canada – the (separatist) Bloc Québécois, which went from 0 to 54 seats (entirely in Québec) and the western (in US terms think “southern”) Reform Party, which went from 0 to 52 seats, almost entirely in Alberta and B.C. (Kim Campbell ran in Vancouver). These two blocks account for most of the 167 seats the Conservatives lost in that election. By comparison, my party, the NDP – also under a woman’s leadership – went from 43 seats to 9. The victorious Liberals only increased their total vote by under 10 percentage points. In sum: Kim Campbell was no “ethnic” or “regional” candidate and her campaign took place at the worst possible time for herself and her party.

One question I would like to see asked of Iranians is – “why are so many of your protest posters in English?” It sseems a strange thing to do, but there has to be a reason for it.

Laleh (@46),

I have an Iranian colleague who has said similar things to me.

P.S. What is your opinion of Eric Hooglund?

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2009/06/who-voted-ahmadinejad

skidmarx@32:

The original “stainless-steel-rat” short story is one of the all-time classics. I read it in the original in 6th or 7th grade in either “Galaxy” or “Astounding” (later Analog) SF magazine., IIRC. Great memories–but that’s all. My Mother threw out my entire collection of Galaxy and Astounding that I had stored in 3 huge creaking drawers in my room to make more room for linens when I went away to college in 1962. I could have killed her. (BTW, The author sure took an original concept and ran with it a long way with his later series of books, didn’t he?)

Among his findings were that in most cases the party apparatus of down-state political parties was skeletal at best—and that the existence of any massive, organized machines that churned out stolen votes was risible on it’s face.
Was the latter a finding in this long MA essay, or your gloss on it? In any case, this seems to be an interesting new addition to the armchair conspiracy-refutation literature – very small (poorly overseen?) groups are yet another bunch who can’t do conspiracies (at least not in the interesting part of history that falls within a moving 60-year ‘current affairs’ window.)