Election-Campaign Law

Huge turnout in Iran?s presidential election

By Michael Alvarez

There have been a flurry of news reports on huge turnout in Iran’s presidential election. The BBC is reporting that polling has been extended for two extra hours, “Huge Turnout in Iran Presidential Poll.”

NPR is reporting that there have been some claims of irregularities:

There were no immediate reports of unrest, though Mousavi’s campaign lodged a protest not long after the polls opened, charging that election monitors had been blocked from taking up their posts at some voting stations. There also were reports that Tehran’s cell-phone text messaging system was experiencing technical problems. The Mousavi camp has used text messages as a means to send campaign information quickly to large numbers of people.

A top Mousavi aide, Ali Reza Beheshti, also said some polling stations in Iran’s northwestern and southern provinces ran out of ballots, claiming it was a “deliberate attempt by the government to keep people from voting.”

Full post as published by Election Updates on June 12, 2009 (boomark / email).