Relying on his unique experience during his candidacy for the eighth Majlis, former member of the Assembly of Experts on Leadership, Majid Ansari recently noted that if during the upcoming presidential election in June the votes of a reformist candidate such as Mohammad Khatami, exceeded those of his conservative rival, such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, by only five or six million votes, the name of the conservative candidate would be announced as the winner of the election.

That an experienced figure in the Islamic Republic is so concerned about manipulating people's votes is sufficient reason for ordinary citizens to be fully pessimistic about the impact of their votes in the upcoming election.

Elections are multi-party games in which all parties involved must trust the results. Otherwise, even if no cheating takes place, participants can and have the right to doubt the results.

For this reason, in all democratic political regimes, an independent third party, whose honesty and credibility is accepted by all involved parties in the election, is charged with the task of administering the election.

In Iran, unfortunately, the interior ministry is in charge of administering the election while the Guardian Council supervises the administration. Neither of these two institutions, however, has the trust of all the parties involved in the election.

What is the solution then? Can the regime order participants in the election to trust the Interior Ministry and Guardian Council officials? This is something that governments usually do, but trust is not attainable through orders.

The Liberation Front of Iran and several other political groups have called for international monitoring of Iran's elections to ensure the integrity of the process. Although international monitoring of elections has become a norm in the international community and is not regarded as an instance of interfering in sovereignty of other nations, it seems (to many in this country) that this solution is not applicable to Iran.

The first reason is that governments usually are the ones to volunteer and ask international figures and institutions to monitor their elections as a means of improving their credibility in the international community. The Iranian government, however, shies away from any kind of international monitoring for reasons that we know and will never abide by. On the other hand, the international community cannot force any country to accept international monitoring of its elections.

Given this problem, it seems as if another solution must be sought to alleviate the problem of lack of trust in Iran's election administration.

In effect, if the political regime is willing to gain the trust of involved parties in the elections, that task imposes no costs on it. The election administration council can, from the very beginning, invite prominent figures known for their honesty and integrity as well as representatives from various participating groups to monitor the proceedings and once and for all put to rest all allegations of fraud in elections.

Given that such an action imposes no cost on the regime and, in return, ensures the integrity of elections and accuracy of results, if the interior ministry does not follow this course of action, one must logically conclude that Majid Ansari is telling the truth.

In this midst, if the reformists are not worried that five or six million of their votes will not be counted, then we have nothing to talk about. However, if they would not accept that, is it not better to announce to the regime that they will participate in the election only if representatives of various groups are allowed to fully monitor its administration?