Sixty percent of Iranian voters cast their ballot Friday in their country’s parliamentary elections. With half of all races decided, Iranian reform candidates have won over 30 seats, slightly reducing the power of the ruling religious conservative faction. Voter turnout picked up after a slow start, eventually exceeding the 51 percent in elections four years ago.

The New York Times:

With about half of the races for Parliament decided Saturday, more than 30 reformers appear to have won seats although most of their most prominent members had been barred from running by the country’s conservative establishment.

Religious conservatives, as expected, took a vast majority of the 141 seats that had already been decided. The conservative winners included some critics of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, notably Ali Larijani, the former nuclear negotiator, who resigned over his differences with the president.

The results were announced by Press TV, the official government television network. Voter turnout was 60 percent, compared with 51 percent four years earlier, according to the Interior Ministry.

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