Dark days: A first hand account of the Iranian presidential election | Hacker News Reader

Dark days: A first hand account of the Iranian presidential election

ehsanakhgari.org

27 pointscurtis9 comments

Nate Silver says that the analysis is flawed: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/06/statistical-evidence-...

Just to be clear (for people who don't read the entire post), Silver goes on to say,

"In case this isn't clear, I am not suggesting that any and all statistical analysis purporting to show tampering in Iran's election results will turn out to be fruitless. I am merely suggesting that this particular analysis is dubious; it is not a smoking gun.

"To properly analyze Iran's election results is probably something best left to Middle East experts, rather than experts on U.S. electoral politics. Juan Cole, for instance, who certainty does know a thing or two about foreign policy, sees plenty of things that smell fishy to him."

And links to this excellent post about why it looks like the election actually was stolen: http://www.juancole.com/2009/06/stealing-iranian-election.ht...

Just for the record, I submitted this blog post with the title

> Dark days: A first hand account of the Iranian presidential election

I'm not sure that the new title (how does that work?) is an improvement. My point in submitting the post wasn't to make the case that the election had been rigged. It was simply to present a first hand account from inside Iran about what was happening. Probably the most important thing to take away from the post is not that the Iranian election was rigged, but rather than a lot of Iranians think it was, and they are really, really not happy about it.

Edit: minor phrasing

Sometimes I think there is always a cynical response to any sensational news story, regardless of its validity. I guess it is important to see a controversial position from all sides, but in this case I think there is a clear conclusion (that the voting process was tampered with), that still stands regardless of one faulty statistical analysis of the data. In this case I wonder if it is a way to internally differentiate ourselves from what we would consider blind ignorant sheep of the liberal media.

Does this really surprise anyone?

The most disturbing part is the number of 'Stay safe Ehsan' messages in the comments. Scary!

Stay safe Ehsan.

Follow @mousavi1388 to see updates on the #iranelection - every other channel is down for them, but the Twitter account is still being updated. Lots of videos and photos from the streets too.

Meh. If you follow your local elections on election night, perhaps in the U.S., you'll notice an interesting pattern: the percentage of the vote really doesn't change significantly between 10% of the vote counted and 100% of the vote counted. No matter which precincts report first, or how the bias is supposed to be (rural precincts support candidate X! minority precincts support candidate Y!), by the time 10% of the vote has been counted you have enough of a sample that you can call that particular race unless two candidates are very very close.

If 10% of the vote counted says candidate X is winning 60-40, candidate X is going to win, and she's going to win with about 60% of the vote.

I don't know (nor particularly care) whether the Iranian election was rigged, but this analysis doesn't show anything untoward at all.

This is, informally, Nate's critique, I think.

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