Ahmadinejad Wins Iran Election by Wide Margin

Polling officers (sitting) collect ballots from voters (right), in Iran's presidential election on June 12. (Mazdak Kermani/The Epoch Times)

With votes counted from over 37 thousand voting centers, the official results of Iran’s presidential election have been announced. Incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won over 63 percent of the votes, Iran’s semi-official ISNA news agency reported.

Reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi received 33 percent of the votes. The other two candidates, liberal cleric Mehdi Karoubi and former Revolutionary Guard leader Mohsen Rezai, received only a small fraction.

Over 30 million of 46 million eligible voters cast their ballots in the election.

Mousavi, who has been endorsed by the country’s students and middle-class, has accused the election organizers of violations and claimed himself as the winner.

“I consider myself the definite winner of this election,” Mousavi told reporters in a news conference as the election results were still being counted with Ahmadinejad already announced to be leading with a large margin.

Mousavi said his aides overseeing the election on his behalf were forced out of many voting centers and, despite what the media has reported about some voting centers extending the voting time so everyone had the chance to participate, some voting centers were closed early, leaving some voters locked out. Some centers did not have enough ballot papers, too, he said.  

An architect and a painter, Mousavi was prime minister in the early years of the Islamic Republic but has stayed away from politics for over 20 years.

Mousavi said he will follow up on the violations and tell people about the problems.

A spokesperson for the Guardian Council, an influential 12-member council that also oversees elections, told reporters that there have been considerable reductions in violations in this year’s elections and all violations have been minor.  

Alarmed by the recent street gatherings of large crowds of youth covered with Mousavi’s green campaign color shouting slogans in their candidate’s support, the head of Iran’s security forces has warned that regardless of the elections results, any gathering in the streets will be forbidden.

According to Iran’s election rules, if a candidate wins over 50 percent of the votes, there will not be a second round.