Iran: Home of The Naive?

It may be a reasonable supposition that one way you can tell a mature democracy from an immature one is the equanimity with which the former accepts voter fraud. In an immature democracy, like that of Iran, voters tend to bask in the naïve belief that their votes count and that the man with the most actual ballots will win. Right now, this time.
Their disillusionment when it appears to them that fraud has actually occurred is frightening to behold. Rioters lit fires and threw rocks all day long today in the streets of Teheran. They drew logical inferences from the fact that in a country where ballots normally take hours and hours to count, millions of votes poured in during the first few hours, putting the incumbent far into the lead.
Compare this to the behavior of Richard Nixon who actually was robbed of the election of 1960—when Chicago’s Daley held back the city (Democratic) vote until he could see how many Republican votes he needed to overcome in southern Illinois.
Nixon was well aware of the voting fraud in Illinois and Texas—which probably cost him the very close election. He didn’t even bother to protest (although he did possibly overreact in 1972 when he spotted some of the same people working against him and sent in the Watergate burglars to see what they were up to.
Watergate was unfortunate and foolish considering that Nixon had a won election on his hands. But considering his past and the men he was up against, I might have done the same idiotic thing in his place. He was a better man in 1960).
For years Americans repeated the Chicago refrain with a cynical snicker—“Vote early, vote often.” Or regaled one another with stories of the dead rising to vote throughout the city. That was true in Jersey City under Boss Hague, in New York under Tammany Hall—there was even suspicion of it in Grand Rapids during the 1940s.
We could go on with the Pendergast Machine in Kansas City, the FitzGeralds and the Kennedys of Boston, the corrupt Republican machine that ran Philadelphia for decades, Frank McKay of Grand Rapids who bought up all the mayor’s debts—and owned him, and so forth and so forth.
There’s the 1948 election of “Landslide Lyndon”, as other senators snidely referred to Senator Johnson (not in his hearing!). Southern Texas county after county came in with huge majorities for Johnson in 1948. These counties were run by Johnson backers who used gun toting poll watchers to guarantee how Mexican field hands voted.
There was very good evidence that at least 20,000 of these ballots all had obviously forged signatures. Boxes of them were brought into a state court to be opened and inspected. Johnson’s lead was 67 votes at the time. Just before they could open the boxes, a Democratic Supreme Court justice ordered them sealed forever—and Johnson joined the Senate as another Democratic Senator.
There’s the election of 2000 when a Republican Supreme Court handed George W. Bush the disputed electoral votes of Florida, completely ignoring the popular vote of the nation—and possibly Florida. Al Gore sputtered and then went off to make movies.
Most people who wanted to know knew that votes in the hills of Kentucky and West Virginia sold for ten dollars a head in the 1950s and 60s. When John Kennedy’s bag man accidentally lost a whole suitcase of tens during the 1960 West Virginia primary, they had to call Boston and get Joe to send more.
That’s when he wrote the famous telegram, “I’m not buying a landslide!”
We could go on and on. The fact is Americans tend to take a bad call in a football game more seriously than they do a miscalled election. We don’t even dwell on the “what if’s”. What if Nixon had won in 1960? What if Johnson had lost in 1948? What if Al Gore had won in 2000?
Who knows? Who cares? In modern times, I cannot think of a civil disturbance that was caused because of real or suspected election fraud. We same to take it as all part of the game—win some, lose some. Nor can I think of an appeal (as opposed to a recount) or prosecution because of fraud at the polls.
Does that make us blasé—or merely cynical? Have we been sipping too long from the beer barrels that used to stand at polling places (and why bars are often closed on election day today)? Was ten dollars a vote satisfaction enough, no matter who won?
We don’t riot. Sometimes we make a face before returning to business. A few of the more politically active among us rant angrily for a year or two. Then we go on. Nobody burns a stack of tires on a main street; nobody throws rocks at cops—not since Grant Park at least.
But that was not over a bad call on an election—that was war against the entire party system, the draft and the Vietnam War. And that’s only one. No riots in 1960, none in 2000. In a sense it is because we are a mature democracy.
They did us dirty this time—we’ll get them back next time.
That’s because we’re confident there will be a next time. Nixon came back and won in 1968; the Democrats won in 2008. We have faith that eventually the system will work itself out.
The angry voters of Iran have no such assurance. They had a chance this time; they cannot be sure there will be another time. Thus the rage—and despair—of today.
Perhaps that’s not so much maturity on our part as it is faith—faith in the system, faith that someday we will be heard and win. That, even amidst corruption and chicanery, is a very good thing.
I could wish it for the young people of Teheran.