The Requirement of the RA Electoral Code on Publicizing the Voter Lists Was Breached. The Signed Voter Lists Are Not Publicly Available

Under the Armenian Electoral Code, the signed voter lists were tobe made publicly availableon April 4, 2017 by 12pm. By19.00 of April 4, 2017, by 7 the links posted by the CEC on its website were not available in most cases. This means that the Government failed to meet this commitment by grossly violating the requirements of the Armenian Electoral Code.

Despite the fact that it is possible to find the titles of the signed voter lists by clicking on the link elections.am/lists, the voter lists themselves are actually unavailable. It takes quite a while to access the signed voter list of each precinct . However, this is not even possible for the lists of all precincts. In most cases it is simply not possible to open these links. Thus, the signed voter lists are actually unavailable for citizens, organizations conducting an observation mission and the political parties.

The turnout for the Parliamentary Elections 2017 was quite large and it is possible to check the real number of participation only by examining the signed voter lists,which isimpossible now.

It is also worth mentioning that the deadline for the submission of complaints concerning false data for participation in elections expires on April 5, 2017 at 11am. We have well-founded reasons to believethat the behavior of the CEC is not a consequence of technical failure but rather an attempt to conceal the real picture of participation in the elections, not excluding that, it also aims to deprive the participants of this process of reasonable opportunity to submit complaints concerning cases of false participation.

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The 2017 parliamentary election observation mission is made possible with funding from the European Union, the National Endowment for Democracy, and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Tbilisi.

The information and views set out in this statement are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the European Union. Neither the European Union institutions and bodies nor any person acting on their behalf may be held responsible for the use which may be made of the information contained therein.

“Citizen Observer” Initiative

“Europe in Law Association” NGO

“Transparency International Anti-Corruption Center” NGO

“Journalists’ Azparez Club” NGO