Iran: A Study in How Not to Rig an Election

Lesson 1: Don't pick candidates you wouldn't want to win. I always thought Iran could serve as an example to the world's other great popular-authoritarian regime in China; in order to give the people a semblance of democracy, have the Guardian Council - or Politburo, as the case may be - select a few pre-approved candidates, and allow the people to elect their preference. In recent memory, this has seemed to work in Iran, with the public alternating hard-liners with perceived "reformists," and the Ayatollah not raising a fuss. But trouble starts when, as Supreme Leader, you take a particular fancy to the sitting President. So why, if you're controlling the process in the first place, would you nominate anyone who could possibly be a threat to Ahmadinejad? Least of all, two Reformists? If anything, you should be nominating candidates even more conservative than Ahmadinejad with absolutely no charisma.

Lesson 2: Don't allow open campaigning. Take a lesson from Hugo Chavez, and muscle out the opposition from the media. Crack down on uninhibited internet usage, a la the Communist Party in China. And for heaven's sake, don't permit free assembly during the campaign, only to revoke it the day after the election. You gotta do it slowly, so no one notices.

Lesson 3: Don't make it a landslide. This should be Election-Rigging 101. In a hotly-contested election, no one is going to believe a result of 63 to 34 percent against the opposition candidate with all the momentum. First, take a few days, pretend like you're reconfirming all of the results, and announce that your incumbent President has won a narrow majority, with, let's say, 52% of the vote, and Mousavi grabbing a respectable 45%. Ahmadinejad still wins outright, and has the appearance of a mandate, since he was not able to pass the threshhold to avoid a second round in the 2005 elections. And while that only leaves 3% to divide between the remaining two candidates, the hard-liner Rezai will fall in line, and you'll only have the irritation of Mehdi Karroubi, who did nothing but complain about the last elections as well.

Lesson 4: Don't threaten protesters. Any authoritarian regime knows that if you are going to use violence against your populace, you blame seedy anti-Government extremists for the turmoil after the fact. You don't make thinly-veiled threats to your public, as Ayatollah Khamenei did at prayers this past Friday, blaming opposition leaders that you chose for "bloodshed and chaos" that may result if protests continue. Not only are you making an unequivocal announcement to the world that you have no respect for human rights, but human nature dictates that interest in the opposition will double out of sheer spite.