Fraud in Iran elections and US Primary elections

[Simon_Jester]

How so, D-13?

[bobalot]

It kinda reminds me of the 2009 presidential elections in Iran.

Middle class white guy compares wild claims of vote rigging (without a shred of evidence) against an unpopular fringe candidate with actual vote rigging, political violence and torture.

... and Paulbots wonder why they are widely mocked.

[Simon_Jester]

D-13, the really fundamental difference is in levels of real, concrete oppression of domestic politics. The Iranian government basically stopped its people from even trying to change the government. The conspiracy to prevent this was open and involved government agents physically beating people with clubs.

Not just allegedly rigging votes according to the people who can't figure out why they didn't win in a landslide.

I'll believe allegations of vote rigging when I see proof provided by a neutral third party, or at least reasonable suspicion by a neutral party that has no reason to favor Paul and assume he must be entitled to win.

[Ziggy Stardust]

There's no hard proof of vote rigging in either case...

False. Even if the evidence is not 100% incontrovertible, there is still plenty more verifiably suspicious activity in 2009 Iran than in 2012 USA. Even token Internet searching will show you evidence of this.

But, what you have in both cases is probably losers complaining about their loss, and pointing to some irregularities - which did happen, but don't prove anything foul - to explain it.

Actually, some of the sources for the fraud came from neutral or pro-government parties, not to mention actual statistical analysis of the results.

[bobalot]

Ziggy, I love the logic of a Paulbot demonstrated above.

PAULBOT: The campaign against Ron Paul is just LIKE THE IRANIAN ELECTIONS!!!!

NON-PAULBOT: There is no evidence of a massive conspiracy against Ron Paul.

PAULBOT:... then there is no evidence of election irregularities in Iran because the situations are almost equivalent.

[SirNitram]

I love the zero content shitheadedness from the dumbass above.

INFORMED POSTER: The whining from losers is just like more whining from losers.

IGNORANT SHITHEAD: There's massive evidence of fraud there so nothing alike!!!!!!

ANOTHER IGNORANT TROLL: lies about what was actually said

GTFO

Add content to prove your allegations or this thread is flushing away.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Those both are about the same thing, though the (more reliable) second source explains that this isn't really special.

The second one is an Iranian government body admitting the irregularities exist, along with an incredibly statistically flimsy excuse. Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com has several posts on the subject.

The odds might be against it statistically, but that doesn't prove fraud.

Clearly you didn't read the article. Or understand statistics. But that's fine. I don't expect much better from you.

The point that sailed over your head:

It's true that there is no incontrovertible evidence of fraud in Iran. However, there are a number of proven irregularities in the reported results, not to mention extensive evidence of pre-election shenanigans on the part of pro-government bodies to discourage opponents from voting. In addition, the mathematical distribution of numbers throughout voting districts, as the link I provided demonstrates, is INCREDIBLY unlikely to occur by pure chance. And, in fact, show distinct parallels with the distributions in previous, proven instances of voter fraud. The way the "random" numbers were distributed fits with what you would expect to see if someone was making up "random" numbers.

While you are right this isn't 100% proof, this is incredibly fishy (and if you don't understand that the odds of these results happening from pure chance are <5% than that's your problem). And there is literally 0 evidence so far of fraud in this campaign, and nothing close to the scale that has been repeatedly demonstrated in the 2009 Iranian elections.

INFORMED POSTER: The whining from losers is just like more whining from losers.

IGNORANT SHITHEAD: There's massive evidence of fraud there so nothing alike!!!!!!

ANOTHER IGNORANT TROLL: lies about what was actually said

I love that your entire debating strategy on this board is to straw man the fuck out of other people's arguments, and then claim they don't understand your argument, even when they quote you word for word. You are really such a despicable little fool.

[SirNitram]

What "allegations", you fucking retard?

Do you even understand what I said?

I fucking said there is no evidence of a conspiracy!

Anything to support your braindead analogy of Iranian suppression and anything similar to Ron Paul's campaign. Or were you simply trolling for reaction with such an inaccurate statement?

I suggest you stop flaming a mod doing his job.

[Ziggy Stardust]

I'm talking about the reactions of the losers - original post in reply to crossroad's: "The Fraud is rampant, and everwhere, and ANYONE can see it. But you can't provide a single instance of such fraud?"

Everyone in this thread knows what you are talking about you worthless sack of crap (also, don't think I didn't notice you ignored my previous post).

You said that this Ron Paul situation reminds you of the 2009 Iranian elections. In your words, both instances are cases of,

But, what you have in both cases is probably losers complaining about their loss, and pointing to some irregularities - which did happen, but don't prove anything foul - to explain it.

.

Those are YOUR WORDS. So stop trying to spin this as everyone else being too stupid to comprehend your amazing and striking analysis of world events. You were called out for this inane statement, and evidence was provided that the two situations are not at all comparable. Instead of conceding, or providing any evidence that your comparison is at ALL apt, you claim, again, that people are misunderstanding your posts. Which they aren't, because nobody here is nearly as stupid as you.

Shut the fuck up.

[Ziggy Stardust]

It is about the losers complaining and MAKING UP fraud complaints because they can't accept the will of the voters disagrees with them.

Wow, what a surprise, you act in the exact way I predicted.

The whole fucking point is that the situations are not comparable, because the fraud complaints were not "made up" because they "can't accept the will of the voters disagrees with them." There is some legitimacy to the fraud complaints in Iran, OF WHICH THE SUPPRESSION IS A HUGE COMPONENT.

You are just willfully being ignorant at this point. I could not have spelled this out any clearer.

Seriously, this pisses me off. Did you actually read the rebuttals?

You didn't even respond to my last post in this thread, you lying asshole. After that post, there is a post by Nitram responding to you, you responding to Nitram, and then this exchange. You blatantly ignored it.

or should I say "don't think i didn't notice you ignored the several sources that disagreed with you"?

Concession accepted.

[SirNitram]

Buddy, there's only one braindead troll in this thread, and he's the one with the animated avatar.

I'm not even talking about the suppression, you worthless shitstain. Try reading my posts. I didn't talk about that AT ALL, not ONE fucking word about it prior to your troll attempt. I'm talking about the reactions of the losers - original post in reply to crossroad's: "The Fraud is rampant, and everwhere, and ANYONE can see it. But you can't provide a single instance of such fraud?"


So, either learn how to read and start talking about reality, or shut the fuck up and get the fuck out. I'm sick of dealing with your dumb ass derailing discussions.

I'm not derailing anything. I replied to your zero content whining when you were called out on how blatantly you were trolling for an overreaction. I am acting as a moderator and demanding rules be applied. I'm sorry if you're butthurt by the rules being insisted on, but you should really wise up on flaming a moderator for walking in and daring to demand you explain your blatant flamebait analogy.

Leave The Staff Alone. Keep in mind that the moderators and administrators are unpaid volunteers with their own lives and demands on their time, and they do not need to be whined at every time a user thinks poorly of them or their actions. If you believe you have a serious grievance, you should use the PM button to contact a different staff member. If you have an issue with a moderator, contact a supermoderator. If you have an issue with a supermoderator, talk to an administrator. If you have an issue with an administrator, contact Darth Wong. If you have an issue with Darth Wong, get lost.

You whine constantly when I dare step into threads to do my job where you and your farcical claims are involved. Now. Either behave or, if you truly think I'm out of line, contact the appropriate people. Be sure to tell them how I am a big bad troll for daring to point out you used such a loaded analogy simply for emotional effect.. IE, trolling.

[SirNitram]

I am acting as a moderator and demanding rules be applied.

It is pathetic how you don't even try to debate issues without hiding behind your green name anymore.

That would hurt if you were more than just some butthurt anonymous Paulbot on the net. You're a dime a dozen. You were warned repeatedly about flaming moderators.

[Bakustra]

Am I the only one who notices the irony here? People crowing about how this Other group is so stupid, contesting elections they handily lost for easily-explicable reasons... and then turning around and defending another group doing the exact same thing. It's frankly hilarious.

[Simon_Jester]

Who, precisely, are you referring to? What did they say?

[Bakustra]

Everybody who made fun of Ron Paul's supporters and is now insisting that it is perfectly legitimate to defend the Iranian opposition despite the immense similarities between the two in how they reacted to electoral losses and the actual probability of those losses being real ones. A gentleman never names names, however.

EDIT: With special affection for people using terms like "PaulTard" or whatever in the process. I guess I should be making up some nicknames for the Iranian opposition just to see people freak, but I sympathize with them too much to put the bite into it.

[Simon_Jester]

That doesn't make any sense to me.

My criticism of Ron Paul is that his policy proposals are incredibly dumb and would do a lot of harm to the nation. And that many of his supporters just seem to not get this, that whenever you talk about the consequences of breaking up regulatory regimes or whatever they just stare blankly and repeat a talking point. It has nothing to do with allegations of fraud, or losing elections, even if I'm not convinced that the Paullist allegations are true.

I'd think Paul was a bad choice for president, and that many of his supporters are fools, even if he'd won every single primary he ran in.


How is this somehow inconsistent with thinking it's a shame the Iranian opposition was unable to take power? The Iranian opposition is a movement with totally different goals, dealing with a totally different government, in another country on the other side of the world. The only things they have in common are "neither of them got to take office after the election" and "both of them accused their mainstream opponents of fraud."

Some accusations of fraud are false. Some are true. If I thought someone's accusation is false, why wouldn't I think differently of them? Why would I see them as somehow "immensely similar" to someone with totally different political aims, whose accusation I think is true?

[Bakustra]

I have explained my thoughts- if you think that I am referring to you, that is interesting, but, ultimately, your problem.

(PS: If you haven't been acting in the way I have described, I may not be referring to you!)

[Simon_Jester]

I'm not even sure who your thoughts do refer to.

Who here is crowing about Paulists losing, as opposed to just thinking they're crazy and dogmatic?

[bobalot]

Everybody who made fun of Ron Paul's supporters and is now insisting that it is perfectly legitimate to defend the Iranian opposition despite the immense similarities between the two in how they reacted to electoral losses and the actual probability of those losses being real ones. A gentleman never names names, however.

EDIT: With special affection for people using terms like "PaulTard" or whatever in the process. I guess I should be making up some nicknames for the Iranian opposition just to see people freak, but I sympathize with them too much to put the bite into it.

I'm a bit confused. Who here is defending the Iranian regime?

People are pointing out that the wild claims of massive voter fraud/conspiracy* by butthurt Ron Paul supporters are in no way comparable to what the Iranian opposition faced in 2009.

* Ron Paul's popular vote is sitting on 10.5% to 11%. Just sit back and ponder the scale of voter fraud or enormity of the conspiracy against Ron Paul his supporters are implying here.

[SCRawl]

A few thoughts on what I've seen here so far.

D13, you keep saying that there's no proof. Proof is a ridiculous standard. Only mathematicians and those concerned with the production of liquor should be looking for proof. Everywhere else we want evidence. And next time you have a problem with a moderator doing some moderating, take it to PM.

Having said that, it seems to me that people have been misunderstanding your basic point, which was about the reactions to both elections. The particulars of those elections do not have to be the same to point out that those reactions are similar.

Bakustra, you're prancing around acting coy, dropping your little bombs on unnamed recipients. If you really think it ungentlemanly to name names, then don't bring it up. And now that you've brought it up, either clarify your statement or stay out of the thread.

[Ziggy Stardust]

You can't just call something "incredibly statistically flimsy" with no reasoning at all.

I provided the reasoning. You ignored it, and had the balls to accuse me of ignoring YOU, because of some bizarre fantasy world where evidence doesn't count.

The Iranian source gave a perfectly reasonable answer to this claim - people move around. They don't have voter registration and fixed polling places like we do in the United States.

Which still has no bearing on the OTHER links I posted.

Clearly, you haven't read any of the rebuttals.

You see, darling, for it to be a rebuttal, it has to actually address the points I raised.

The election had excellent turnout.

So? That doesn't address the well-documented pre-election violence, including campaign offices for Mousavi being torched, access to social media sites being blocked after pro-Mousavi Facebook pages were set up, and the jamming of cell phone broadcasts on election day. Seriously, unless anything of this scale happens in the U.S. campaign, there's NO PARALLEL.

But what is not among their problems is outright fraud.

I'm glad you are so thoroughly convinced of an opinion that flies in the face of all available evidence.

That's not even particularly plausible. Suppose you're the government of a country with high technology like computers, educated people in fields like math, psychology, and more. You've been running fair elections for decades.

You want to steal an election.

Would you just make up a bunch of numbers off the top of your head? I wouldn't.

But, more than that, they did a transparent recount of part of the vote. Nothing fishy was found. The data from the individual districts, signed off by opposition observers, adds up.

Even if their statistical analysis is rock solid, unlikely things DO happen.

Congratulations! You are a fucking moron who doesn't understand the articles I linked to or basic statistical inference. Is this what you call a rebuttal? Waiving away evidence with, "that's not plausible"? And you accuse ME of broken record tactics?

Seriously, did you even look at the raw data or read any of the counters?

I did. If you had read any of the links I posted, you would know this. But it's a lot more fun to pretend to be right than make any effort, right?

The election was fair.

I guess when you ignore the evidence, it's easy to make these bold statements.

Turns out other people don't always share your political concerns, not in America, and certainly not in Iran.

You don't even know what my political concerns are you lying little weasel. I never even made a statement in this thread about Ron Paul or the political race. I only posted because you were saying monumentally stupid things without a shred of evidence, and others have call you out for it as well as I. Seriously, it boggles my mind how dishonest you are being. You accuse me of ignoring your rebuttals, which themselves were just ignoring my arguments and evidence entirely, then smugly pass it all off as some vague political bias on my part? Tell me right now what my political concerns are, and how this is any way impacts the points I made, or fuck off.

[Ziggy Stardust]

But, in both cases, it is a far, far cry from being reasonably conclusive; neither case has proof of fraud.

Okay, let me spell this out for you, because you are obviously too fucking stupid to understand what everyone here is trying to tell you. Unless the following happen in the American election, you CANNOT compare it to the Iranian election cycle the way you have:

1) burning of opposition campaign offices
2) blocking of pro-opposition internet sites
3) jamming of mobile/electronic communication
4) severe statistical anomalies, of the type that often occur when numbers are tampered, followed by flimsy excuses from the government that would not be statistically sufficient to cover the anomalies anyway, and are inconsistent with demographic/statistical trends from previous Iranian elections
5) millions of missing ballots
6) BANNING OF PRO-OPPOSITION ORGANIZATIONS, FOLLOWED BY STREET RIOTS
7) censorship of news media, especially foreign

Honestly, it does not matter whether there WAS outright fraud or not, or how strong the evidence is. The point is, the situation is ENTIRELY different from the situation with Ron Paul, and it takes amazing mental gymnastics to equate them in any way, shape, or form, or to dismiss the Iranian protesters as simply being butt-hurt losers. I don't care if you don't believe the statistical evidence is as strong as some others do; the whole point of these statistics is that it only infers something, not proves it. However, until there are similar irregularities in the Ron Paul vote, in addition to all of the other practices I outlined above, the situations are NOT comparable.

It is dangerous to just use evidence as your standard because you can probably find evidence for just about anything.

This outlook on life explains so much about you. Let's go tell the scientists to stop using evidence post-haste!

[Ziggy Stardust]

OK, liar, I guess you STILL didn't read the rebuttals.

They went through every claim the CH paper made and discussed, in detail, multiple sources of evidence to debunk them. That's the whole damned point behind them.

The link only talked about the voter turnout numbers. But guess what? If you had actually read any of the sources I linked to, you would know THAT ISN'T THE STATISTICAL ANOMALY I WAS TALKING ABOUT. You fucking ignoramus. What you linked to does not address the actual numbers that I was fucking talking about.

PS don't think I didn't notice how you ignored the third link to yet another detailed rebuttal.

You mean the link that you fully admitted you didn't even read? I'm not doing your homework for you.

Also, once again you ignore the majority of my post, preferring instead to cherry-pick and strawman. Typical.

[D.Turtle]

Split from the Ron Paul Supporters Cause County Convention Chaos thread.

Needless to say, this thread is being watched - address each others arguments and don't go batshit crazy if someone misunderstands you.

[Bakustra]

A few thoughts on what I've seen here so far.

D13, you keep saying that there's no proof. Proof is a ridiculous standard. Only mathematicians and those concerned with the production of liquor should be looking for proof. Everywhere else we want evidence. And next time you have a problem with a moderator doing some moderating, take it to PM.

Having said that, it seems to me that people have been misunderstanding your basic point, which was about the reactions to both elections. The particulars of those elections do not have to be the same to point out that those reactions are similar.

Bakustra, you're prancing around acting coy, dropping your little bombs on unnamed recipients. If you really think it ungentlemanly to name names, then don't bring it up. And now that you've brought it up, either clarify your statement or stay out of the thread.

You complain about the use of rhetorical, not-entirely-serious flourishes and use "prancing" and "little bombs"? Physician, heal thyself! I'm not going to bother going through this thread when people like bobalot who I did aim it at understood perfectly well that I was criticizing their behavior, which consists of rightfully mocking Ron Paul supporters who claim a vast conspiracy and yet freaking out when this is compared to the Iranian elections of 2009, furiously defending a vast conspiracy to rig those elections. Because that is simple hypocrisy- if one is entirely lacking in credibility, then so is the other, because they both rely on definite but minor irregularities and a belief that belief in the righteousness of one's own cause guarantees victory, and both have far more credible explanations than massive conspiracies for election fraud.