Almost Against Fact-based Skepticism

Two quotes first:

#1 Soroush in an interview with BBC: "What defines a democracy is not only the ability to elect someone, but also to deny someone power. and that is what happened in this election, where many people supporting all different candidates just did non want a candidate to continue as president."

#2 Kadivar in his speech on the commemoration of the 40th of martyrs of 25 Khordad: "It is not up to us to prove that the elections was fraud, it is up to them to prove that it was sound. Since people have the legitimate power and the right to ask and criticize, the burden of proof is on the government, not us."

Now one assumption...I have assumed the underdog in a campaign is always supported with more voters and sympathizers.

Contrary to what I liked, in last year's elections in Iran, the candidate for the reformists did not become the president. The election results were seen as fraudulent, but there was no hard evidence ever offered. Mousavi's headquarters were raided, so were the houses of most of the people close to him. It is possible that every shred of evidence have been stolen, hidden or destroyed. It is possible that we would never know for sure if there was a full fledge election fraud or not! Wait...

The phrase:'we would never know for sure if there was a full fledge election fraud' would not 'in fact' be true, because all the remaining factual evidence point toward the 'fact' that there has not been a fraud, despite the smaller flaws here and there. So, it seems, the conclusion is that the election was not rigged. It was a fair election, without any major fraud. Now...there are two questions that come to mind:

1) What if we look beyond facts as evidence? what if a collective emotion, or attitude can be taken as evidence? What if the public joy, sadness, disappointment or any other emotion can be taken as an evidence to evict or free someone just like any other evidence that justifies the law to take into affect? This is not something too far fetched. Think about it. What happened after the Canadian Hockey Olympic final. Is it not 'illegal' for people to block the Yonge and Dundas intersection? It seems to me that public outbreaks of an emotion are already a form of law. They produce exceptions to the enforcing of a law. Keep in mind the quote #1 from Soroush above. A democracy is a system where you not only give power to someone, but as people you also have the ability to take power from someone. I don't want to expand on this further, but as a student of Karl Popper, Soroush is saying that a democratic nation should involve themselves in falsification of their past choices, just like how an unbiased individual should commit the truth of his ideas to process of falsification. If this is properly embedded into a legal system (A big IF in itself, but at least somewhat plausible in theory!!) then at an outbreak of an emotion that is large and decisive enough, some branch can legally yield to popular demand and ignore a law. In the Iranian case, the authorities should have caved in to ignore the election results that were nonetheless at least so far as the [remaining] hard facts are concerned seemed right.

2) Let's ignore all the countless small and big number of problems and errors in the election process and do assume that the election was sound. What if the opposition always sees itself in a position to object to the results and accuse the other side of fraud! I was thinking about all this while ago in the summer of 09 when Afghanistan was holding their elections right after Iran's controversial elections. There was already talk of fraud going on by NATO, or by Hamid Karzai corrupt government. I was thinking that after what happened in Iran, whether the opposition manages to disqualify the election or the the incumbent gets to enforce it, a paradox in democracy is revealed in practice. The opposition groups, whenever close enough to the incumbent, can cry election fraud, and since 'obviously' they were not the ones organizing the elections as a natural underdog they would have at least support of their own base of voters, and maybe even sympathy of the rest of the voters. But think about the #2 quote by Kadivar: the burden of proof is always on the incumbent...logically at least. What if the public emotions are not turning in favor of the opposition...what if as the person who the does have the burden of proof the incumbent plays the underdog. In the end, in a more normal context which would be unlike that of Iran, to maintain the integrity and security of the community it is best if one of the politician to step aside, or just follow the procedures existing in the law whether that law is right or wrong. Otherwise, democracy would not be able to maintain itself.

I can still argue further against either 1) or 2) here, and interestingly enough each of them seem to be very contradictory to the other one.