In Iran, interesting and unusual figures are dug up for every election, particularly Majlis ‎elections. In fact, the Ministry of the Interior and the Guardians Council, both of which ‎are charged with supervising the implementation and supervision of the national ‎elections, stress that they are lenient on the candidates applying for permission to run for ‎public office by using statistics that is available to them. On the other side of the ‎spectrum, critics too publicize the rejection of candidates applying to run for public office ‎and reject the claims of the Ministry of the Interior and the Guardians Council.‎

The Guardians Council usually claims that it accepts 70 percent of candidates who apply ‎for formal acceptance to run for a public office. This percent, from their perspective, ‎indicates the competitive nature of the elections in the country and their non-political ‎treatment of the issue. Officials at the Ministry of the Interior present the same views.‎

But how does all this look when one compares the figures with standards for free and fair ‎elections? It appears that these statistics have little value for an assessment of the ‎process. In other words, it is possible that even 99 percent of the candidates are rejected, ‎while elections still remain completely fair and free. Similarly, it is possible to have 99 ‎percent of the candidates accepted, while the elections remain unfair and despotic.‎

What is really important are the standards by which candidates are accepted or rejected to ‎run for office, and not the numbers. According to accepted norms for free and fair ‎elections, there are a number of accepted criteria such as minimum age, literacy, absence ‎of a criminal record, violence, etc that are applied to the candidates. So if 99 percent of ‎the applicants are rejected because of these reasons, the integrity and fairness of the ‎elections will not be harmed. ‎

What distances an election from the goals of being fair and free is that the applicants are ‎looked at from a political or ideological perspective and through such eyes. Under these ‎circumstances, even if a single candidate is rejected because of this perspective, the ‎integrity of the elections will be attacked.‎

So if we imagine an assembly of say 200 representatives, the exclusion of 200 candidates ‎on political and ideological grounds negates the whole process of elections on grounds of ‎being unfair and undemocratic because the will of the people may be to have those very ‎‎200 individuals elected to public office. Clearly in such a case, people are deprived of ‎being represented by whoever they wanted to be represented. This forces them to either ‎not participate in the elections or vote for someone who is really not their choice.‎

So all this talk in Iran about statistics and percentage of candidates who are accepted or ‎rejected is really a waste of time as it does not address the key issue of fairness and ‎freeness of the elections.‎