Episode 6: Election Oversight Boards

Published 2020-12-03

Equality, Season 1: Human Rights and the Guardian Council

A new podcast from Arseh Sevom. Season 1 examines the Guardian Council’s role in denying human rights.

Episode 6: Guardian Council’s Election Oversight Boards

Article 99 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran gives the Guardian Council power to oversee national elections, determining who can run. This is a power that the Guardian Council continues to expand, adding offices and grabbing power all over the country.

Since 2001, the council has been expanding its influence on elections through surveillance and demands for ideological conformity from candidates. In fact, in the 2020 elections, it prevented the candidacy of nearly every single reform-minded or independent candidate. This includes rejecting the candidacy of 90 sitting members of parliament, many of whom are affiliated with the reformists or independent.

Former MP Rajabali Mazrouei notes:

“From the seventh parliament on, candidates have been vetted based on ideological and political alignmenent with the Guardian Council…”

Episode 6 of Arseh Sevom’s podcast Equality (Barabari) looks at the election supervisory boards, which were initially designed to oversee only the voting process and guarantee the integrity of elections. Now they have become one of the main actors in the elections of Iran over the years, with large budgets, surveillance on private citizens, many still children, to create files on those who may one day come to power.