Democratic progress faltered in Mauritania, when in August 2008, less than two years after Mauritanian citizens democratically elected Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi as president, senior military officers led a coup d’état which overturned the government. A military junta led by General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz ruled the country during the proceeding months of political gridlock which saw the rise of a coalition of political parties standing in opposition to the junta, demanding return to constitutional order.

By Patrick Merloe
Director of Electoral Programs at NDI

Since the Iranian election on June 12th, onlookers have called for a recount to assess whether incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad actually won, as the election commission reported he had. It’s certainly true that the results are suspicious. One example is the large portion of results available in an extraordinarily short period of time given the fact that voters had to handwrite a candidate’s name on the ballot and that the counting had to reconcile number of ballot stubs with ballots.

The Iran Election Bulletin is a biweekly publication covering domestic political and election issues in Iran.

By Sophie Bordbar

Nearly two weeks after the Ministry of Interior announced that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won the June 12 presidential election in a landside, protests by angry voters who allege election fraud continue. According to the Ministry, Ahmadinejad received 63 percent of the votes, but his victory is contested by Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, two reformist candidates who stood against him. The third candidate, Mohsen Rezai, a conservative, has also lodged complaints about election irregularities.

By Masih Alinejad

By Geneive Abdo
Iran Analyst, The Century Foundation

The basij militias may have crushed the historic street protests against Iran’s election results, but Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei now faces a more pressing problem: how to prevent a potent coalition of political elites arrayed against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from destabilizing the entire Islamic political system – and undercutting his own power, too.