Casting a ballot: Iran extends polling amidst record turnout.
Iran extends polling on huge turnout
Droves of voters endured long lines in stifling temperatures to cast ballots in a critical presidential election today that could reshape Iran's domestic and foreign policies.
Iranians began lining up at polling stations as early as 90 minutes before the start of voting this morning to try to beat crowds.
Officials late this afternoon extended voting by two hours or more and official results are not expected until Saturday, according to a report in the LA Times.
The election, taking place amid a time of great economic worry here, pits incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against Mir-Hossein Mousavi, a soft-spoken former prime minister who has been out of public life for 20 years and remains a blank slate.
Beyond bread-and-butter concerns, the election hinges on basic questions of national identity: whether Iran should serve as a pious base of Islamic resistance to the West or whether it should moderate its social and international policies 30 years after a cataclysmic revolution.
Voters in upscale northern Tehran neighborhoods such as Niavaran and Farmanieh lined up around the corners outside schools and mosques used as polling places.
They reported waiting more than two hours to cast ballots, in what many described as a vote of protest against the Ahmadinejad era, characterised by increased Islamic morality patrols and a confrontational stance toward the West.
"We're voting with confidence," said Fatemeh Rashid-Mahmoudi, a 62-year-old retired nurse who said she was voting for Mousavi, the first time she had cast a ballot in the presidential election since the 1997 victory of reformist President Mohammad Khatami.
She came to vote with her daughters Mahsa, 24, and Mitra, 31, both professional women chafing under the restrictions of the Islamic Republic.
But among poorer voters, there was plenty of support for Ahmadinejad, who is widely perceived as a scrappy and pious nationalist who stands up to fat cats at home and bullies abroad.
"The level of social and individual freedom as it is now is enough for us," Omulnabi Khatibi, a 40-year-old homemaker wearing a black chador, told the LA Times.
"More than this level, things go out of control."
Tensions between the Ahmadinejad and Mousavi camps remained high.
The Interior Ministry today announced a ban on the candidates' political gatherings until election results are announced.
Cellphone text messaging suddenly became impossible, perhaps as an attempt to prevent volatile political gatherings.
Mousavi's headquarters alleged that the move was meant to prevent attempts to monitor the vote.
Unconfirmed rumors swirled of ballot shortages in the provinces and early closings of voting stations, all adding to the sense of urgency to get out and vote, especially among female and young voters who often have not voted in the past.
"Look at this line of people," said Siamak Madani, 44, a professor of law, gesturing toward a huge mass of people queuing up at the Hosseiniyeh Ershad Mosque on Shariati Street in north Tehran.
"These people didn't come to vote for Mousavi. They came to vote for change."