Good morning, Hank, it's Sunday.

Today I'm gonna tell you five reasons why I think the presidential election in Iran was fraudulent, but first we have to have an election of our own. Nerdfighters: The beard, should I keep it or shave it? Vote in comments.

Ah, I realize this isn't an important election, but unlike Iran, I will at least adhere to the results.

(Intro)

OK, Hank, so first, two sentences of background on Iran:

Iran is an "Islamic Republic" which means that that while the position of President is important, it's not THAT important because ultimately, Iran's domestic and international affairs are always decided by a council of religious leaders, which is lead by the Ayatollah Khamenei.

Every time Iran has a presidential election like, 37,000 moderates try to run for president but they are barred from doing so, which has, historically, often led to low voter turnout because people don't show up to vote for guys they don't like.

OK, Hank, so a couple days ago Iran had a presidential election and, as you may know, the incumbent president of Iran is a guy named Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who, to use a somewhat technical political science term, is a bit of douche-nozzle. And in this election there were 37,000 moderates who weren't allowed to run, just like usual, but they were also two quazi-reformist candidates including a former prime minister of Iran named Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

So, on election day, a stunning 85% of eligible voters voted and a couple hours after the polls closed, the Interior Ministry announced that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was winning with 63% of the vote, which, Hank, at least far as I'm concerned, is just a little tiniest bit impossible. I maintain that Ahmadinejad and possibly Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei stole the election.

(Sniff sniff, sniff) Is that a fatwa I smell on me?

Hank, I'm not saying that this election was invalid because a douche-nozzle happened to win it. Douche-nozzles win elections all the time, all over the world. What I'm saying it that there's just a lot of things that don't add up, like number one: Tabriz. The reformist candidate Mousavi is from a city called Tabriz and historically, the city of Tabriz always votes for Mr. Mousavi or whoever the guy is from his ethnic group who's running. And yet, inexplicably, in this election, they apparently voted 2:1 for Ahmadinejad. I mean, Hank, it's the equivalent of John McCain winning Chicago.

Reason 2: 2005. Hank, the last time Iran had a presidential election was in 2005, and even though a ton of people didn't show up at the polls because they were mad about their candidates not being on the ballot, Ahmadinejad, who was less crazy and more popular than he is now, still wasn't able to avoid a runoff, which leads me to reason three: Turnout.

The turnout in this election was ridiculously high by Iranian standards and in the last twenty years, every time there has been high turnout, a reformist candidate has won. All of the pre-election polls indicated that the only chance Ahmadinejad had was if the turnout was extremely low.

Number 4: Superhuman counting. Hank, despite the incredibly high turnout, the Interior Ministry managed to announce the election results within, like, two hours of polls closing. Hank, they counted, like, ten million more ballots thirty times faster than they ever have in the past. It's almost like they weren't counting them at all.

And, number 5: The possible acknowledgment. Hank, because the Iranian government has started to kick out foreign journalists and shut down websites it's a little hard to get reliable information, even for people like me, who have spent the entire day reading Iranian Twitters (link in the sidebar). But many people from inside Mousavi's campaign are reporting that the Interior Ministry called him to say that he had won the election shortly before that same Interior Ministry went on TV and announced that Mousavi had, in fact, lost the election.

Hank, we still don't know the whole story about the elections. It's possible that somehow they weren't rigged, but I do hope that the government if Iran has the decency to honor the will of its people. As it says in the Qur'an, "Truly, God does not guide those who transgress and lie."

Hank, like I said, I have links in the sidebar to the Twitters of young Iranians who are Tweeting through all of this. You often hear that nothing interesting can be said in 140 characters. Obviously the people who say that aren't following the young Iranian woman who just wrote "If Iran sleeps tonight, it will sleep forever."