Addressing Iranian lawmakers at Tuesday’s open session of Parliament, Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli hailed the fact the Guardian Council approved the results of the 12th presidential election without annulment of even one single ballot box.
He went on to add that complaints received from a number of monitoring bodies are either mostly reviewed or currently in the process of announcing verdict on them.
According to Rahmani Fazli, the slow process of voting was one of the objections leveled at the Interior Ministry; “the slow process was due to electronic authentication of voters and ensuring the integrity of the election, which was inevitable.”
“600 cases of press violations were observed during the election which have been submitted to the legal committee for further investigation,” he said.
The number of voting stations was 62,381, which indicate a 20 percent increase compared to 53,000 ballot stations in the previous presidential election, he added.
“There were 56 million eligible voters. 68 million voting papers were printed out and distributed in provinces and cities, which were 20 percent more than the number of eligible voters,” he said.
One vote was taken every 87 seconds, whereas in the previous election, it was every 92 seconds, he added.
According to Rahmani Fazli, there was a 7 percent increase of voter turnout in villages considering that rural population had a 700,000 drop.
“Most voters were in the range group of 26-35, comprising about 28.5 of total number of voters,” he said.
The minister went on to add, “the security of the election was provided under the situation where enemies spared no effort and measure for disturbing the process of election.”
“The high turnout managed to change international equations in Iran’s favor,” he said.
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