Electoral Laws

Iran’s electoral rules cannot be understood through a single election code. The Constitution establishes fundamental institutions and principles; separate legislation and regulations specify how particular contests operate. Article 99 assigns supervision of presidential, parliamentary, and Assembly of Experts elections, together with referendums, to the Guardian Council. The Assembly of Experts is the body constitutionally responsible for selecting the supreme leader. Local council elections are absent from that enumeration. s1

This distinction matters when reading an election announcement or an account of a dispute. A rule concerning presidential candidates does not automatically apply to parliamentary candidates, while an institution supervising national elections need not supervise municipal contests. The inspected presidential and parliamentary supervision laws themselves establish different arrangements. s3s4

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For presidential elections, Article 114 establishes direct election, a four-year term, and a limit of two consecutive terms. Article 115 sets substantive qualifications, including Iranian origin and nationality, administrative ability, and commitment to the Islamic Republic and the country’s official religion. Article 117 requires an absolute majority and provides for a second round when no candidate obtains one. These provisions describe the constitutional framework rather than every administrative step needed to conduct an election. s1

Constitutional interpretation is another source of operative rules. Article 98 gives the Guardian Council authority to interpret the Constitution. In its 1991 interpretation of Article 99, the council stated that supervision includes binding intervention throughout the electoral process, including approving or rejecting candidates’ qualifications. Often described as approbatory supervision, this interpretation makes supervision substantially broader than observing polling stations. s1s2

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Candidate screening determines who can appear on the ballot before voters make their choice. The legal foundation of that screening and its political consequences are separate questions: an institution’s power under domestic law does not, by itself, establish that an election offers unrestricted competition. The House of Commons Library’s assessment of the March 2024 elections documented the exclusion of reformist and moderate candidates and distinguished those restrictions from the subsequent voting results. s5

The parliamentary supervision law also distinguishes subordinate supervisory bodies from the Guardian Council itself. Its provisions reserve decisions to suspend or annul an election to the council, rather than allowing the central supervisory body to exercise that authority independently. An account of an election dispute should therefore identify the decision-maker and the legal power used, rather than referring vaguely to electoral authorities. s3

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Local councils operate under a separate statutory framework. The inspected consolidated council law distinguishes Ministry of Interior execution from council-election supervision and locates the permanent secretariat of the central electoral supervisory body in parliament. Its provisions address candidate registration, background checks, supervision, complaints, and electoral offences. This structure should not be replaced with the national-election model merely because both involve voting. s6

Legal version control is essential. The council text inspected here incorporates amendments through Solar Hijri 1403/12/19. Older translations remain useful for understanding institutional foundations, but they cannot establish every deadline or procedural requirement applicable at the research cutoff. Before this page can serve as a current legal reference, the amended national election statutes and subsequent council-law changes must be checked against authoritative promulgated texts.

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