March 15, 2024
by Warren L. Nelson
The March 1 elections might have been dubbed “Shuffle the Rightwing Deck,” as voters few as they were dumped some old conservatives and promoted some new ones. The Reformists didn’t do any worse than expected in the Majlis elections. Not a single Reformist was elected. But the Reformist Front, the umbrella group for Reformists, said not even a single one of its candidates was allowed to run by the Council of Guardians, so the fact that not a single Reformist won election surprised no one. The Associated Press said it compared the list of 245 first round winners to the various endorsement lists produced by conservative groups and found that 200 of the winners were on the conservative lists. The 45 moderate and independent winners is not much different from the 56 such deputies in the outgoing Majlis.
The turnout was really the main thing analysts were watching to see if voters would stay away in droves in rejection of the Islamic Republic. The Interior Ministry said the turnout for the Majlis election was the lowest in the history of the Islamic Republic at 41 percent. But that was not much lower than the turnout four years ago of 42.6 percent.
It should be noted that the weather was cold and wintry over much of the country and that could have contributed to a low turnout. But the regime was going all-out to promote voting. In West Azerbaijan province, the police chief announced that his officers had arrested 50 people for using social media to encourage voters to boycott the polls.
Many people said the closeness to four years ago meant the regime had cheated and lied about the turnout. But others asked why, if the regime was cheating, it didn’t say the turnout was 43 percent, so it wouldn’t be the lowest turnout in regime history, an embarrassing figure. They asked why anyone in the regime would cheat to produce the worst figure in regime history.
The daily Hamshahri published the turnout figures by province, showing only three provinces with turnouts above 50 percent: Khorasan South at 89 percent, which is astoundingly high; Kohgiluyeh va Boyer Ahmad at 66 percent and Semnan at 61 percent. It showed three provinces below 10 percent: Esfahan at 6 percent; Ardebil at 3 percent and East Azerbaijan at 2 percent. Figures that low are incredible, but East Azerbaijan and Ardebil were covered in snow on Election Day, which might account, in part, for the low figures.
Provinces with large turnouts at anti-regime protests in 2022 had low but not shockingly low turnouts on Election Day: Mazandaran at 43 percent; Kurdistan at 31 percent and Sistan va Baluchestan at 18 percent. In the months leading up to the election, the powers-that-be did not mention turnout very much, but in the last two weeks before the balloting, that was all they talked about. And when the miserable turnout figure was announced, they just ignored it. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi gave a speech in which he lauded the “epic” turnout, being willfully blind to what had happened.
He called it a “great victory” over enemy countries who worked hard to depress the turnout, part of the regime’s standard mythology. The US mocked the regime’s election enthusiasm, but did not encourage a ballot boycott. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters the day before the election, “I have no expectation that Iran’s elections will be free and fair and I suspect that a great number of Iranians have no expectation that those elections will be free and fair.” But it’s not just the turnout numbers that show voters objecting to the regime. It also the scale of voided ballots. Every election in every country has a small percentage of voided ballots where voters make mistakes. In Iran, it historically was around 2-to-3 percent.
This time, the Interior Ministry said that 5 percent of the ballots were invalid and another 8 percent were disallowed because votes were cast for people who weren’t authorized to run presumably Reformists. This was the first time the Interior Ministry had split the voided ballots into two categories, and it wasn’t clear why, but 13 percent of the ballots being voided is an extremely high percentage for any country. The voided percentage was about the same in the 2021 presidential election. A major blow to the system came when former President Mohammad Khatami said he was not voting.
Until now, he has always voted, even while criticizing the regime for banning many candidates he supported. But this time he shifted. He said he was standing with the majority of Iranians and their discontent with the governance of the country. His abstention brought disrespectful catcalls from hardliners. Another former president, Mahmud Ahmadi-nejad, joined Khatami in criticizing the election. Well, Ahmadi-nejad being Ahmadi-nejad, he did not criticize the election, he ridiculed it. “What victory?” he asked. “Casting aside the people is not a victory.
It is the biggest defeat.” To win one of the 290 seats in the Majlis, a candidate had to win at least 20 percent of the ballots cast in his or her constituency. A total of 245 seats were decided in this first round, with the remaining 45 seats to be determined in the second round to be held in late April or early May. In Tehran, where there are 30 seats with every Tehrani able to vote for all 30, only 14 passed the 20 percent mark. The next 32 candidates will be in the second round for the remaining 16 seats.
The Council of Guardians approved an unusually large number of women as candidates, a total of 1,713 across the country. But with the ranks of voters tilted toward the right, only 11 women won seats, though some may still win in the runoff round. In the last Majlis, there were 16 female deputies. Historically, political groups have published lists of the candidates they endorse and usually one list is an overwhelming victor. But this time, there was a list of hardliners and another list of hardliners and still another list of hardliners, with candidates appearing on more than one list.
The voters in Tehran this time refused to endorse one list and seem to approach voting like ordering in a Chinese restaurant one from Column A and one from Column B. They also picked some unusual names. The biggest winner in Tehran was Mahmud Nabavian, a cleric who opposed Iran’s nuclear deal with the West despite its being endorsed by the Supreme Leader and who has said he believes the country needs to build nuclear weapons with which to confront Israel, a position that is also contrary to that of the Supreme Leader.
Second place went to Hamid Rasai, who has said that protesters who came into the streets in 2022 after the death of Mahsa Amini ought to be executed. Curiously, Rasai was rejected as a Majlis candidate four years ago by the Council of Guardians. Third place went to Amir Hossain Sabeti, who has no political experience at all but is well-known as a television personality.
As for his political positions, he has denied that there was any coronavirus epidemic. It was down in fourth place where Majlis Speaker Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf ended up, presumably weakened by the never-ending allegations of corruption. He came in first four years ago. But there is a widespread expectation that he will emerge yet again as speaker not because any factions like him or trust him but because they dislike and mistrust the alternatives even more. It had been widely anticipated the Mohammad-Reza Bahonar would challenge Qalibaf. Bahonar is a highly respected and non-extreme conservative who retired four years ago.
He ran this time from Kerman province and lost. Turnout in Tehran was reported at 24 percent, which might be part of the explanation for the unusual winners. The public was not only voting for a new Majlis, it was also voting for the 88 members of the Assembly of Experts, the allcleric body that votes for a new Supreme Leader when that post falls vacant.
The assembly members have terms of eight years, so those elected this time are most likely to vote for a successor to the 84-year-old incumbent, Khamenehi. Once again, the voters shuffled the deck unexpectedly. They denied seats in the body to three very prominent clerics who have held cabinet posts and sat in the leadership circles of the regime for years. Most prominently, Sadeq Larijani lost his seat in the assembly.
Larijani was previously chairman of the Judiciary for eight years and is currently the chair of the Expediency Council, which drafts broad policy for the regime and which referees disputes between the Majlis and the Council of Guardians. His upset was a body blow to the regime. He came in fifth and last in Mazandaran province, which has four seats. Only 138 candidates were approved to run for the 88 seats in the assembly, so it took some effort by voters to cast aside those three prominent clerics.
President Raisi was the only candidate originally approved to run for the Assembly of Experts from Khorasan South province, in an obvious move to guarantee his election. But the ridicule when that was announced was so harsh that the Council of Guardians swiftly approved the candidacy of a cleric no one had heard of to run (but not campaign) in Khorasan South. Still, Raisi only got 82 percent of the vote in the province. It appeared that the voters cleaned house in the Majlis as well.
Although 249 incumbents were approved to run again, the Election Headquarters said just 103 of the winners decided so far had served previously in the Majlis. While some will likely win seats in the second round of voting, it appears the voting public gave a thumbs down to roughly half the incumbents running. Candidates for the Majlis had to be from 30 to 75 years of age and hold a master’s degree or its clerical equivalent
