I don't buy that Ben... If the mulla's pulled that one (fraudulent vote count) in Canada they would need a lot of corks to plug all their holes. Respect for a vote count only goes as far as the popular legitimacy of that count, and in Iran they have no popular legitimacy of their vote count... they may well need their corks yet, which is why the mulla's have back tracked and are talking of an investigation... we aren't quite there yet in Canada... election legitimacy in Canada faces a far different problem of representation within the system, rather than the actual vote counting issue of Iran.

Yet, Bush lost Florida the first time around but the electoral votes were given to him anyway. Even the US is not immune.

The electoral votes system in the US can be an obstacle to real democracy, in my humble opinion. After the people have already voted an elite group of appointees and unelected wunderkinds have an opportunity to go against the verdict of the majority.

There was a good voter turnout in Iran, but if the ballot boxes are stuffed and inconvenient votes not counted it doesn't matter what the voter turnout is or where it happens.

Actually Iran is (fortunately) not a country that is still totally in the dark ages. Overall it's a modern society with great universities and a highly educated younger class of intellectuals, such as scientists and professionals.

The thing that is dragging it down are religious dogma and intolerance which are based on rules, mandates and customs originating from the time of the dark ages.

Somehow they must liberated themselves from that oppression.

Also, it would help if extremism would be dealt a blow by a final equitable settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

You're right Ben, too many Canadians seem to take the right to vote for granted. So many of us have grown up in a peaceful environment with a stable government that it becomes difficult to imagine it being any other way. All we have to complain about is the eternal mismanagement of our tax monies, how different it would be if control over the government was overthrown every few years, or if we were subjected to communist rule. Most of us do not know how good we have it, and I fear that I am one of that number. The citizens of Iran would sure appreciate the Canadian style of government.
metalman.

From what I see this is not about the importance of voting, it is about the importance of having a voting process in place that people trust. It appears that Iran does not have that.

Who knows if Mousavi is right in his claims? Do we have independent polls? I see none on the net in a 5 minute scour of it. Do we have independent exit interviews/polls? Ditto.

Who does one believe?

The views from Israeli are interesting.

“Mousavi win wouldn't stop nuke drive”
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1244371078382&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

“Mousavi bad for Israel”
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3730321,00.html

“Mousavi claims win in Iran poll”
http://www.news24.com/Content/World/News/1073/eb14b74b06b74321aa1720e23c6da96b/12-06-2009%2010-06/Mousavi_claims_win_in_Iran_poll

Here is a description of the voting portion of the election system in Iran
http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2009/06/irans_voting_manipulation_indu.html

"It is not clear how much voting manipulation will occur on June 12, but it is abundantly clear that Iran's election procedures leave ample opportunity for massive voter fraud."

So, in a system like that, how important is it to vote? Kinda useless it seems to me.

from the link below an opinion about who is really in charge in Iran ...

Sadjadpour said:

“In retrospect, it looks like the entire campaign was a show, in the sense that Ayatollah Khamanei was never going to let Ahmadinejad lose. Assuming these results are allowed to stand, I think we should be clear about what type of regime we are dealing with in Tehran. Just as we talk about Assad’s Syria and Mubarak’s Egypt, I think we are now dealing with Khamanei’s Iran.”

http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=23262&prog=zgp&proj=zme

Sorry, i am just too dang dumb to see how a corrupted election in Iran (sorry, possibly corrupted) should lead us all to run to the polls in the next canadian election. These people may have gotten ripped off, thats true. It would also be a tragedy as this vote was between parties which were significantly different.
I am sure that if the stakes were similar in a Canadian election then our turnout would be very high indeed. One more time: there are a lot of reasons people dont vote. It isnt a matter of shame or lack of patriotism or any such nonsense. I appreciate the right to vote (though i am not simple enough to equate it with freedom) and i do vote when i see a significant difference in the options available and when i actually support one or the other. Why do people insit that other folks vote? The whole guilt/duty thing does nothing to ensure the integrity of the system (the real problem with the Iran vote) and actually gives credence to what may be a corrupt system in the first place.
Ben and all you others out there answer me this: What is the one thing that all phoney, rigged elections lay claim to? The answer is high voter turn out. Claiming high turnout give the election the appearence of legitimacy, even if the election was rigged or, as could be argued in canada, it consisted of several parties, none of which represent the people of the nation. Our low voter turnout may be a statement of low confidence more than anything else. Of course we could also be saying that we have confidence that we will be ok regardless of who gets elected (my view).
Do you really want the politicians in power to be able to claim huge popular support when really they just got the votes because people felt obliged to vote and just picked the lesser of 5 evils?

Well said Caranmacil.

Wasn't it old Joe Stalin who remarked that it, "...wasn't the people that vote who decide an election, it's the people that COUNT THE VOTES"? That's the problem with a 'secret ballot', only those doing the counting really know how many votes were cast for one side or the other. Maybe we should replace the secret ballot with a recorded vote. After all, if we are to have 'responsible' government, shouldn't we all know just who's responsible for giving us that government?

That is why we have scruteneers from the various parties to watch the vote counting.

I agree with Socred and figure if you had a receipt number for your vote then you could check it on-line. It can still be a random ballot once your eligibility is verified, but the ballot itself would have a receipt slip attached where the voter could log on to view that indeed their vote has been counted correctly. It only makes sense that this is part of the process if voting is indeed important. Otherwise we are no better than an Iranian election where they announce the results without even counting the pieces of paper.

How do we really know we are any better than the Iranians, other than our faith in our fellow citizens to give us an accurate and thus legitimate vote count?

Have you ever been involved with the ballot counting that goes on when the election is over, eagleone?

There are the Elections BC or Elections Canada people, or the City people for that matter who open the box and start to count. Scrutineers from any party that had people running are there to observe the process and can ask for clarification if they missed something. They will mark down the vote count on their sheets and send or phone those in to their campaign offices. Those numbers can be checked against the official numbers published by the elections office.

Those observers can also be present during the voting procedure to observe that and make note of any inconsistency with the law.

For there to be a consistent, accross the region and/or country of abuse of the system, a very complex conspiracy must exist.

Are you suggesting that exists anywhere in Canada?

I'm suggesting a potential voter doesn't care about if a conspiracy is actually possible or not, but rather that they think it might be possible, or not even that maybe the voter just does not see how their vote counts, maybe some voters see no reason why a vote count shouldn't be 100% secret and verifiable if the technology can do that in the modern world... what is there to hide if the process isn't made as transparent and accountable as possible... makes some wonder?

I say voter fraud takes place all the time in Canada and the scrutineers are a relic of another age in the case of electronic vote counting machines with vote counting software that has never been tested as tamper proof. The people that sell and maintain some of the machines are also selling the policy that our referendums decide I strongly suspect. A scrutineer as loyal as they may be to a fair count has no clue how to scrutinize a computer program in a scanner or touch screen machine and that is the direction of vote counting 'efficiencies' we have seen in recent years.... how do you think things like the gas deal in PG were approved a few years back?

It makes no sense why someone would argue against greater transparency for the voter on how their actual single vote is tabulated. If one could log on to elections BC and see their single vote tabulated in the correct column... they would then be encouraged to participate, because they would view their vote as counting in a system that confers legitimacy through its openness and transparency to the people who the system is supposed to serve.

Otherwise if the system can't serve the needs of the voter to bring the greatest amount of legitimacy and transparency to the system in the view of the greatest amount of skeptics, then what is the point of voting they might ask? To add legitimacy to the mirage of legitimacy potential bandits crave?

IMO the most important part of any democracy is the vote count. The people of Iran are learning now why the integrity of that process is all that really matters when it comes to voting.

"If one could log on to elections BC and see their single vote tabulated in the correct column"

Alright, so let me accept that process. So you can see that your vote is in the right column. And everyone else who has a computer or access to one can see if theirs is in the right column.

BUT, how do you know that the TOTAL is correct?

How do you know that the program has not been tampered with so that the total for one party is being factored up by 1.09534 while the total for another is factored down?

When I am watching a vote count from a ballot box and I csn see with my own eyes the marks next to the candidate I am scrutineering for, and I can see that same number posted against that polling station and the boxes at that station, and others in my shoes can do the same for the ones they were observing, and we have others on our team totalling them, then I have relative certainty that the count is accurate within in a very small marign of error.

Put any of that through a computer, and I will say "show me that there has not been any tampering along the way". That means back to the actual punch cards and hanging chads and all that, or back to the sheets marked for scanning.

There is absolutely nothing foolproof about being able to see that your own vote is in the proper column.

Its not full proof... all it does is give a voter piece of mind that at least their one vote was counted correctly, therefor worth while making the vote in the first place. Thats all. Its not mutually exclusive of all the things you mentioned either... all of which strengthens the system.

Some Diabold machines can be tampered with remotely to alter the counting program... this is now proven fact... why one must ask would the vote counting company allow for a back door like that? Why would our elections regulators not find this out before the machines are used to count votes? Who owns the voting company... need I say more. Diabold is used everywhere to count more than 60% of the ballots in North America including here in PG.