For the first time in three years, Iranians head to the polls on Friday in a parliamentary election to vote 3,400 candidates into 290 seats. In 2009, a nationwide disputed vote triggered massive protests after allegations of rigging ballots to re-elect President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad surfaced. A lawmaker running for re-election, Zohreh Elahian, said, “During the 2009 elections, attempts were made to use cheating in the elections as an excuse to plot against the regime. Attempts were made to show the world that there is no democracy in Iran and that the people are not the ones who have the power to elect their leaders. That’s why the Friday elections represent the people’s will to participate in determining their own future and their country’s fate.”
In the days prior to the election, campaigning deepened as workers distributed leaflets and plastered candidate posters along tree-lined streets in Tehran, while television broadcast programming encouraged voters to cast their ballots. In the publicity campaign, slogans included a quote from the founder of the nation, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, saying, “The measure of a nation is its vote.” In Iran, 48 million people are eligible to vote.
