The Pathology of The Electoral Finance System of The Islamic Republic of Iran’s Elections

This study seeks to examine and evaluate Iran’s electoral finance system. The importance of the research is due to the fact that safe and complete national elections, depends on a transparent financial system behind the elections. Meanwhile, there is a consensus among experts in the field of elections in Iran that the Iranian electoral system, in particular, needs a new review over elections’ spendings. With the exception of the Law on Transparency and Supervision of Election Expenses of the Islamic Consultative Assembly adopted in 1398 (2019), in the laws of presidential elections and the Islamic Council of cities and villages, there are only some scattered provisions regarding election’s financial system. The main question of this article is: “What are the disatvantages of the current electoral financial system of Iran?” And “What should be the integrity of the electoral financing system in Iran?” The present study was conducted using the library method and descriptive-analytic approach. The results of the research, compared to existing standards that need to be reviewed, show that the most important challenges of the Iranian electoral system in terms of elections’ expenses are: requiring candidates and parties to disclose financial resources, reporting expenditures, election observer, explicit prohibitions and restrictions on the expenses of candidates and parties, guaranteeing strong legal and criminal enforcement any possible violation, payment by government subsidies to parties and candidates, and provide a clear criterion for the allocation of government subsidies.