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2020 Iranian legislative election

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2020 Iranian legislative election

Legislative elections were held in Iran on 21 February 2020, four years after the previous legislative election in 2016. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Iran, the second round, to elect eleven seats, was postponed until 11 September 2020.

Candidates had to be approved by the Guardian Council, and of the 14,000 applying to run for the Islamic Consultative Assembly legislature, 6,850 were rejected, including 90 current members of the Assembly (who were approved to run in the last election). "Moderates and conservatives" were mostly rejected by the Council and "hardliners" approved (according to Parisa Hefzi); while another observer believed some of the rejected were corrupt and others lacking sufficient loyalty to the regime.

The 290-seat Islamic Consultative Assembly consists of 285 directly elected members and five seats reserved for the Zoroastrians, Jews, Assyrian Christians and Armenians (one for Armenians in the north of Iran and one for Armenians in the south). The 285 directly elected seats were elected from 196 single and multi-member constituencies. In single-member constituencies candidates had to receive at least 25% of the vote in the first round to be elected; in cases where no candidate passed the threshold, a second round is held between the top two candidates. In multi-member constituencies, voters cast as many votes as there are seats available; if not all seats are filled by candidates with at least 25% of the vote, a second round is held with twice the number of candidates as there are seats to be filled (or all the original candidates if there are fewer than double the number of seats).

According to Iranian law, in order to qualify as a candidate one must:

A candidate will be disqualified if he/she is found to be mentally impaired, actively supporting the Shah or supporting political parties and organizations deemed illegal or been charged with anti-government activity, converted to another faith or has otherwise renounced the Islamic faith, have been found guilty of corruption, treason, fraud, bribery, is an addict or trafficker or have been found guilty of violating Sharia law. Also, candidates must be literate; candidates cannot have played a role in the pre-1979 government, be large landowners, drug addicts or have convictions relating to actions against the state or apostasy. Government ministers, members of the Guardian Council and High Judicial Council are banned from running for office, as is the Head of the Administrative Court of Justice, the Head of General Inspection, some civil servants and religious leaders and any member of the armed forces.

A total of 14,444 people applied to be candidates in the election and were vetted by the Guardian Council. Of these, 7,296 (51%) were disqualified, including 75% of the members of the outgoing assembly who had applied to stand again. As a result, the election was considered to be a contest between conservatives such as former Tehran mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who describes himself as a "technocrat," and ultra-conservatives opposed to the nuclear deal. Reformists were described as having no compromise for their strategy.[clarification needed]

The Iranian opposition urged their fellow citizens not to vote in the elections, which they describe as a "sham", calling on them to instead work to overthrow the regime. A prominent human rights activist, Narges Mohammadi, has made an appeal to voters from Evin prison to boycott the elections. In Tehran and some other areas, the moderate bloc boycotted in protest over the disqualifications.

A poll by the Iranian Students Polling Agency (ISPA) indicated that over 44 percent of the respondents across Tehran province say they will definitely not take part in elections, with only 21 percent saying they definitely will.

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