The Foreign Service Journal, September 2013

12 SEPTEMBER 2013 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL ates (as defined by We Choose) took 67 percent. The We Choose results show that a more reform-minded candidate than Hassan Rouhani may have captured a victory in the real race, had any been allowed on the ballot. Even so, Western- ers and secularists in Iran are encour- aged. As Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council puts it, “Though hardliners remain in control of key aspects of Iran’s political system, the centrists and reformists have proven that even when the cards are stacked against them, they can still prevail due to their support among the population.” Despite the much lower turnout for the Iranian virtual election than in Rus- sia, where 80,000 participated, Kasparov has high hopes for his project: “We have demonstrated the ability to allow for free, fair and secure elections for any citizen worldwide. This is the first step towards implementation of the system in any country worldwide where people want freedom.” —Jesse Smith, Editorial Intern Face(book)-ing the Music I n the July 2 issue of the Washington Examiner , Michal Conger writes t hat State employees spent $630,000 over a two-year period to attract more “likes” for the department’s Facebook presence. Citing a May report by State’s Office of the Inspector General, Conger notes that between 2011 and March 2013, the cam- paign by the International Information Programs Bureau used advertising and page improvements to boost the number of “likes” for IIP’s English-language Face- book page from 100,000 to two million. Sounds good, right? Unfortunately, the OIG concluded, “Many in the bureau criticize the advertising campaigns as What Might Have Been in Tehran M any in the United States wel- comed the news that Iranian voters chose Hassan Rouhani to suc- ceed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the country’s next president in the June 14 election. Though analysts differ on just how moderate or centrist Rouhani is, he clearly stood out from the five conser- vatives whose candidacies were also approved by the country’s Guardian Council. And for that reason, Rouhani’s massive victory on the first ballot was widely seen as a possible turning point in U.S.-Iranian relations. More than 600 other candidates initially vied for the presidency, but were denied a spot on the final ballot. The Unity for Democracy in Iran and other dissident groups point out that the results of Iran’s elections would likely have been drastically different if voters had had a wider choice of candidates, not simply those hand-picked by the regime. With that in mind, Garry Kasparov, the Russian chess grandmaster and human rights activist, initiated a “We Choose–I ran” virtual election that was held simultaneously with the actual process. A sequel to a similar project during Russia’s 2012 presidential race, We Choose used advanced cybersecurity technologies to enable Iranians to cast votes for a wide array of possible candi- dates on the project’s website. In addition to the six men on the real ballot, We Choose included 14 others deemed to have a significant amount of public support, despite having been banned from the ballot. (Two of these other 14 were eventually permitted on the actual ballot, but withdrew to divert votes to like-minded candidates.) A total of 5,000 Iranians submitted votes to We Choose. The winners, in a virtual tie, were Mir-Hossein Mousavi, a reformist, with 28 percent and Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last shah, with 27.9 percent. While Hassan Rouhani eas- ily won the actual election, he received just 10.7 percent of the virtual votes. However, his camp of reformists/moder- TALKING POINTS SITE OF THE MONTH: Topix W ant to keep up with developments in your hometown while posted over- seas? (Or vice versa?) If so, this may be the site for you. Billing itself as “Your Town, Your News, Your Take,” Topix features local news and discussion forums for every city in the United States, thousands of cities throughout the world and 300,000 other topics. To do this, the site aggregates reporting and opinion pieces from the Gannett, McClatchy and Tribune compa- nies, as well as 74,000 other sources around the world. With more than 12 million registered users, Topix is a top-10 U.S. newspaper site and the second-largest U.S. mobile news site, reaching more than five mil- lion people a month. In March 2012, Topix launche d Politix , an interactive political news and dis- cussion site where users can debate current events and test their knowledge with quizzes. —Steven Alan Honley, Editor