This footage was filmed and produced 5 March 2024.

It took three days for Iran's Interior Ministry to officially announce a figure released by media close to the system seconds after polling stations closed last Friday: only 25 million voters, equivalent to a 41% turnout. Not one vote more, not one vote less, as was made clear after yesterday's speech by Minister Ahmad Vahidi, who pointed out that this result defied those who had called for a boycott of the elections.

"After months of hustle and bustle, 25 million people voted," he said in the ministry's auditorium, without mentioning that the turnout for the election of 290 representatives to parliament and 88 clerics to the Council of Experts was the lowest in the history of the Islamic Republic. It took a while to focus on the issue everyone was talking about: invalid votes, which accounted for 8%, of which 5% were blank votes. In the 2021 presidential elections, won by Ibrahim Raisi, invalid votes had already amounted to 12.7%. That year the turnout was reportedly 49%, also the lowest for a presidential election.

Until yesterday, rumours had suggested that in Tehran the "tainted" votes represented the second highest volume of votes in the whole province. Even local media such as the Mehr Agency mentioned that it was equivalent to 24%. Later the bulletins announced 34%, but the minister avoided talking about the provinces, including the capital, which contributes the largest number of votes to parliament. If usually the winner of the list in Tehran always got more than a million votes, this time he won with 597,000.

SHOTLIST:
1. various of the streets of Tehran;
2. various people voting in Iran;
3. various of Iranian Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi's press conference (Mar 5, 2024).