The commission of electoral district no. 4, administrative district of Arabkir, is carrying out a vote recount in polling place no. 4/01 at the moment, at the request of the Armenian National Congress (ANC).
There are 48 void ballots here. The commission chairman, Tigran Baghdasaryan, suggested that one ballot cast for the Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) be put to a vote, in order to find it valid, but the commission members voted against it. Two voters left funny notes on invalid ballots here too. One of them stated: “I don’t want anyone, I am against,” the other one voted for everyone and wrote at the top of the ballot: “One should act.” This polling place is known for unprecedentedly large number of votes cast for the PAP; ballots cast for the PAP, 655, were more than those cast for the other parties. The votes of the Mission Party, 6, were the fewest. As a result of the vote recount, there was a ballot among those cast for the PAP, on which there were two seals instead of three; it became invalid by the unanimous vote of the commission members. At the beginning of the recount of the Hello Yerevan coalition’s votes, a commission member said “Great” and another commission member joked: “You say ‘Great’ only in the case of the Hello Yerevan coalition; it is a biased attitude. You should either say ‘Great’ about everyone or don’t say it at all.” As a result of the recount, the number of votes cast for the coalition, 74, didn’t change. The votes cast for the ANC, 30, for the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), 25, and for the Rule of Law Party (RLP), 88, didn’t change either. The commission members are carrying out the tenth recount of the RPA’s votes, 358, and one is missing. The envelope of the ballot is there, but the ballot is not there. The commission members deemed it queer and recorded the fact in their record book. The commission chairman, T. Baghdasaryan, said during a conversation with us that they had received requests to carry out recounts in 5 polling places of their electoral district; all five requests were from the ANC. The recount was finished in two polling places yesterday, and no inconsistencies were found; two ballots, one cast for the RPA, the other cast for the Hello Yerevan coalition, were just found valid. Today, besides polling place no. 4/01, a vote recount will be carried out also in polling place no. 4/10.
Arpine SIMONYAN
