The authorities declared Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the official winner of Iran's presidential election on Saturday afternoon, but opposition candidates and their supporters insisted the election had been stolen, and riot police officers used batons and tear gas against thousands of demonstrators in the worst street protests in a decade.

Witnesses reported that at least one person had been shot dead in clashes with the police in Vanak Square in Tehran. Smoke from burning vehicles and tires hung over the city late Saturday.

The Interior Ministry said Mr. Ahmadinejad had won 62.6 percent of the vote, with Mir Hussein Moussavi, the leading challenger, taking just under 34 percent. Turnout was a record 85 percent, officials said.

The issue of vote-rigging has often been raised in Iranian elections, but analysts have generally said the authorities can manipulate the results by only a few percentage points, leaving room for genuine democratic movements.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/world/middleeast/14iran.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&hp

meanwhile .....

Was the Iranian election a fraud? That's what our great western media sources want us to believe. While scanning through the coverage, I could not find one mainstream news article which covered the election results in an objective, unbiased manner.

Either prominently displayed in the title or first paragraph, each of the articles suggest the election was a fraud. The obvious question arises - If their electoral system can't be trusted, why were they watching the results so "closely" in the first place?  I'd probably  find better things to do then obsess over the results of a rigged game, but hey that's just me.

It's worth noting that Iran, unlike the US, does not use electronic voting machines which are easily tampered with. They actually have paper ballots. It's also important to point out the health of their electoral process. They had an 85% turnout!

We, "the champions of democracy" turnout only a fraction of that percentage for our presidential elections. In fact 2 out of 3 American citizens find something better to do during election day.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22827.htm