Citizen Reports Of Ballot Box Irregularities

Emails to RFE/RL's Radio Farda today:

I was a witness at one of the poll booths in Bojnood [North Khorasan Province] on behalf of Musavi's campaign. A report that I may offer is that the ballot box was sent a day in advance without any previous notice and I managed to reach the box within two hours of its arrival. I found out that a total of 130 ballets had already been put in. It isn't clear whether the votes belonged to people or whether it was the authorities' doing. All the authorities were in favor of Ahmadinejad and no other candidate's representatives were present on the spot. All members of the executive committee were pretending that more votes have come this year from people than ever before.... A noticeable point is that the booths were closed at 10:30 p.m. and as soon as the vote-counting started, everyone was congratulating each other on the news that Ahmadinejad had won 20 million votes. Sunday night [June 14], there was a gathering at the Mokhaberat crossroads which was completely peaceful. But the guards scattered the crowd and some people were even beaten for wearing green. Everyone wore black yesterday and it'll be the same for tomorrow. The Melli Bank on the Safa crossroads was in flames last night.

The security forces entered the dorms of Tabriz University on Monday afternoon [June 15] and arrested 10 students of this university.... Amir Mardani and Amin Jahani, who are university student activists, were among the arrested. All the arrested were taken to an unknown location in a van.

I think Khamenei wants to order the suppression of the protesters in the coming Friday prayers, but he should know that if he doesn’t respect people’s votes, we wouldn’t stop protesting and defending our rights until the very last moment. Even if Musavi, Karubi, and Rezai stay quiet, which I don’t think is probable.

We are people from the western and most-deprived area of the province of Hormozgan. The majority of our votes were for Musavi. For instance, Musavi earned 1,533 [votes] against the 242 of Ahmadinejad in one village. In another, it was 660 to 108 in favor of Musavi. In the capital of one sector 1,800 for Musavi, while Ahmadinejad earned nearly 200. It was the same case in more than 90 percent of the villages.