Iran Admits Possible Discrepancy in 3 Million Votes

[satzz69]

TEHRAN — Locked in a continuing bitter contest Monday with Iranians who say the presidential elections were rigged, the authorities here acknowledged that the number of votes cast in 50 cities exceeded the actual number of voters, state television reported following assertions by the country's supreme leader that the ballot was fair.

But the authorities insisted that discrepancies, which could affect three million votes, did not violate Iranian law and the country's influential Guardian Council said it was not clear whether they would decisively change the election result.

The news emerged on the English-language Press TV Web site late Sunday as a bitter rift among Iran's ruling clerics deepened over the disputed election. The outcome of the vote, awarding a lopsided victory to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has convulsed Tehran in the worst violence in 30 years, with the government trying to link the defiant loser to terrorists and detaining relatives of his powerful backer, a founder of the Islamic republic.