2024 Iranian legislative election

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2024 Iranian legislative election
Flag of Iran.svg
←  2020 1 March and 10 May 20242028 →
All 290 seats to the Islamic Consultative Assembly
146 seats are needed for a majority
Turnout40.64% (1.93 pp Red Arrow Down.svg)
 Majority partyMinority partyThird party
  Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel - 2023.jpg Hmyd rsyy.jpg Ali Movahedi Kermani 2019 2.jpg
Leader Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel Hamid Rasaee Mohammad-Ali Movahedi Kermani
Party Coalition Council People's Alliance of Islamic Revolution Forces Unity Council  [ fa ]
Alliance Principlists (hardliners [1] ) Principlists (hardliners [1] ) Principlists [1]
Seats won765745
 Fourth party
  Ali Motahari at Sharif University.jpg
Leader Ali Motahari
Party Voice of the Nation
Alliance Principlists (moderates [1] )
Seats won40
Speaker of the Consultative Assembly before election

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf
Coalition Council

Elected Speaker of the Consultative Assembly

TBD

Legislative elections were held in Iran on 1 March 2024 for the first round, and on 10 May 2024 for the second round.

Contents

They were held four years after the previous election in 2020. [2] The election had a preregistration for the first time as a result of a 2023 law. [3] Elections to the Assembly of Experts took place concurrently with the legislative elections.

The elections had most moderate and reformist figures disqualified from polls. Additionally, there was a historic low voter turnout of 41%, with 5% of the ballots cast being deemed "invalid". [4]

Electoral system

The 290-seat Islamic Consultative Assembly consists of 285 directly elected members and five seats reserved for the Zoroastrians, Jews, Assyrian and Chaldean Christians and Armenians (one for Armenians in the north of Iran and one for Armenians in the south). [5] The 285 directly elected seats were elected from 196 single and multi-member constituencies. In single-member constituencies, candidates had to receive at least 20% of the vote in the first round to be elected; in cases where no candidate passed the threshold, a second round is held between the top two candidates. In multi-member constituencies, voters cast as many votes as there are seats available; if not all seats are filled by candidates with at least 20% of the vote, a second round is held with twice the number of candidates as there are seats to be filled (or all the original candidates if there are fewer than double the number of seats). [5]

Qualifications

As with the previous election, in order to qualify to stand as a candidate in the election, in accordance with Iranian laws, a candidate must: [5]

A candidate will be disqualified if he/she is found to be mentally impaired, actively supporting the Shah or supporting political parties and organizations deemed illegal or been charged with anti-government activity, converted to another faith or has otherwise renounced the Islamic faith, have been found guilty of corruption, treason, fraud, bribery, is an addict or trafficker or have been found guilty of violating Sharia law. [5] Also, candidates must be literate; candidates cannot have played a role in the pre-1979 government, be large landowners, drug addicts or have convictions relating to actions against the state or apostasy. Government ministers, members of the Guardian Council and High Judicial Council are banned from running for office, as is the Head of the Administrative Court of Justice, the Head of General Inspection, some civil servants and religious leaders and any member of the armed forces. [5]

Campaign

Preregistration was held for seven days.[ when? ] A record-breaking 48,847 people registered as candidates in the election, who were then vetted by the Guardian Council to run for election. [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] Of these candidates, 75% were below the age of 50. [11] About 15,200 received final approval to run for office, with reformists believed to constitute between 20 and 30 percent of them. [12] The candidates also included 1,713 women, which was more than double the number who competed in the last election, at 819. [13]

Candidates in the first round and in the second round had only one week to publicly campaign, from 22 February until 29 February and from 2 May 2024 to 9 May 2024 respectively. [14]

Turnout

an Iranian couple after voting Iranian couple.jpg
an Iranian couple after voting

A former minister of intelligence predicted that turnout may be low as the population may distance themselves from the election due to recent protests. [15] A survey released by the state-owned polling center ISPA on 29 February expected a turnout of 38.5 percent nationwide and 23.5 percent in Tehran. [16] Actual turnout was at 41 percent, equivalent to about 25 million voters and the lowest since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. [17] About five percent of ballots cast were also declared "invalid". [4]

Prior to the vote, the newspaper Kayhan claimed that the National Trust Party and the Executives of Construction Party had signed up for the election. In a report, the Islamic Coalition Party invited people to vote. [18] [19] Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged for a strong turnout, saying that "it is important to show the world that the nation is mobilised," and that "the enemies of Iran want to see if the people are present." Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Hossein Salami also urged people to participate, saying that "every vote is like a missile that is fired into the heart of our strongest enemies". [20] President Ebrahim Raisi urged the public to make the elections “a glorious day for the Iranian nation.” [21] In what was seen as an effort to boost turnout, members of the Iranian police were given four days of incentive leave to cast their vote. [22]

President Ebrahim Raisi praised the considerably low turnout as an 'extreme blow' to opponents of the Islamic Republic. However, Azar Mansouri, the head of the Reform Front coalition of parties that boycotted the elections, called for authorities to heed the voice of the silent majority and urged changes to the governance method. [4]

Conduct

Boycott calls

About 275 prominent activists and civil society representatives called for a boycott of the election, citing the "disgraceful" state of the electoral system and the "complete elimination of opponents." [23] Among them was imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate and women's rights activist Narges Mohammadi, who called the vote a "sham". [16] The Reform Front also described the vote as "meaningless, non-competitive and ineffective", while former President Mohammad Khatami said that Iran was "very far from free and competitive elections". [20] In West Azerbaijan province, 50 activists were arrested for calling for a boycott of the election on social media. [22] Former president Hassan Rouhani, who was disqualified from running in the Assembly of Experts after being a member for 24 years, urged for a "protest vote" but did not explicitly call for a boycott. [24]

Opening hours

During the first round, polls opened at 08:00 local time in 59,000 precincts across the country and were initially set to run for ten hours before being extended until midnight. Electronic voting was scheduled to be held in 1,700 polling stations across four constituencies. The Interior Ministry deployed 250,000 security personnel to ensure the conduct of the elections amid tighter scrutiny in the aftermath of the 2024 Kerman bombings. [25] [26] [27] For the second round, polling was held in 22 constituencies with 90 candidates seeking to fill 45 seats in parliament. Sixteen of the contested seats were in Tehran, with 32 candidates seeking positions there. [28]

Results

Initial results revealed that a second round was required for 45 seats in the Islamic Consultative Assembly, in a total of 15 provinces, [17] including the constituency regrouping Tehran, Ray, Shemiran, Eslamshahr and Pardis, which amount to thirty seats, among which 14 were filled in the first round. [4] [29] The second round was held on 10 May. [30] The final results showed that hardliners had won 233 of 290 seats in the assembly. [31]

PartyVotes%Seats
Coalition Council of Islamic Revolution Forces –
Unity Council–
Voice of the Nation–
People's Alliance of Islamic Revolution–
Independents–
Seats reserved for religious minorities5
Total5
Total votes24,861,542–
Registered voters/turnout61,172,29840.64
Source: Isna, Guardian

Reactions

International

The US State Department said that it did not expect the elections to be "be free and fair", noting the disqualification of thousands of candidates in an "opaque process" as well as the "undemocratic and non-transparent administrative, judicial and electoral systems" of the Iranian political system. [24]

See also

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Key facts about Iran's elections on Friday
  2. ↑ "Report: Iran's former speaker, Larijiani, to run for parliamentary vote slated for March 2024", Iran Front Page, 8 May 2023, retrieved 11 May 2023
  3. ↑ "روحانی: طرفداران حکومت اقلیت بر اکثریت آینده انقلاب را تهدید می‌کنند / فریب‌های آماری، بسیار شایع شده / محروم کردن دانشگاه از اساتید برجسته، ظلم است - خبرآنلاین".
  4. 1 2 3 4 "Iran elections: Record low turnout in polls as hardliners win". BBC . 4 March 2024. Retrieved 16 March 2024.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Electoral system IPU
  6. ↑ "امروز آخرین فرصت پیش ثبت‌نام داوطلبان انتخابات مجلس است - خبرگزاری مهر | اخبار ایران و جهان &#124". www.mehrnews.com.
  7. ↑ "کیهان:یکی از دلایل ثبت نام گسترده اصلاح طلبان این است که با ردصلاحیت توسط شورای نگهبان، بهانه برای حمله به این شورا پیدا کنند - خبرآنلاین". www.khabaronline.ir.
  8. ↑ "پرونده ثبت نام اولیه مجلس با ۴۸ هزار و ۸۴۷ متقاضی بسته شد". dolat.ir (in Persian). 13 August 2023. Retrieved 1 March 2024.
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  12. ↑ "Campaigning begins for Iran's legislative election". France 24. 22 February 2024.
  13. ↑ "Iran begins first election campaign since the 2022 mass protests over Mahsa Amini's death in custody". Associated Press. 22 February 2024.
  14. ↑ "مهلت تبلیغات انتخابات مجلس به اتمام رسید". 29 February 2024.
  15. ↑ "Former Minister Warns Of 'Low Satisfaction' Among Iranians". Iran International. 14 August 2023.
  16. 1 2 "Iran begins voting in first parliament election since 2022 protests as questions over turnout loom". Associated Press. 1 March 2024.
  17. 1 2 "Low turnout as conservatives dominate Iran parliamentery vote". Al Jazeera. 4 March 2024.
  18. ↑ "تحریم انتخابات از سوی اصلاح طلبان صورت نمی‌گیرد". مشرق نیوز. 7 August 2023.
  19. ↑ "گزارش کیهان تأیید شد هجوم مدعیان اصلاحات برای ثبت‌نام در انتخابات". Kayhan. 22 May 1402.
  20. 1 2 "Iran heads to the polls, hardliners poised to tighten grip on power". France 24. 1 March 2024.
  21. ↑ "Iranian parliament vote, first since 2022 mass protests, sees a low turnout despite government push". Associated Press. 2 March 2024.
  22. 1 2 "Iran Regime Intensifies Election Engineering Operations". Iran International. 1 March 2024.
  23. ↑ "Iran's 'mock election' brings no hope of change". DW. 28 February 2024.
  24. 1 2 "US Brushes Aside Iran Election Legitimacy". Barron's. 29 February 2024.
  25. ↑ "Iranian parliament vote, first since 2022 mass protests, sees a low turnout despite government push". Associated Press. 2 March 2024.
  26. ↑ "What to expect as Iran votes to elect parliament, religious leaders". Al Jazeera. 1 March 2024.
  27. ↑ https://www.etemadonline.com/%D8%A8%D8%AE%D8%B4-%D8%B3%DB%8C%D8%A7%D8%B3%DB%8C-9/653180-%D8%A7%D9%86%D8%AA%D8%AE%D8%A7%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D8%A7%D9%84%DA%A9%D8%AA%D8%B1%D9%88%D9%86%DB%8C%DA%A9-%D8%B4%D9%87%D8%B1%D9%87%D8%A7%DB%8C-%D8%A7%DB%8C%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%86
  28. ↑ "Iranians vote in parliamentary runoff election after hard-liners dominate initial balloting". Associated Press. 10 May 2024.
  29. ↑ انتخابات مجلس در ۱۵ استان به دور دوم می‌رود
  30. ↑ https://english.news.cn/20240319/600b8ce9ad7d4d638e22dd403cc95351/c.html
  31. ↑ "A parliamentary election runoff puts hard-liners firmly in charge of Iran's parliament". Associated Press. 13 May 2024.
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