The Citizen Observer Initiative (COI) has submitted 96 complaints to the RA Administrative Court, appealing the decisions of the Territorial Electoral Commissions and the Central Electoral Commission on electoral violations registered by observers during the 2017 Parliamentary Elections. The complaints are related to numerous violations of objective and subjective electoral right registered by citizen observers acting on behalf of the organizations acting under the umbrella of the COI.
The complaints on subjective electoral rights include violations of the rights of observers, media representatives, proxies and commission members, pressure on and violence in respect of them, failure to supply observers with the relevant documentation, obstruction of the right to video- and/or audiorecord the proceedings, etc.
The complaints on objective electoral rights include violations in respect of failure to adequately furnish the voting room, presence of campaign materials in the voting room, camera failures, violations of the commission member rotation, technical equipment failures, multiple voting or multiple voting attempts, incompliances between the lists produced by the technical equipment and the signed voter lists, absence of personal data from voter lists, unstamped printouts, presence of unauthorized people in polling stations, ballot boxes with no seals, cases of deprivation of the right to vote, presence of candidates during vote, bringing of ballots or other items from outside, unlawful overcrowding in and around polling stations, violations of the procedure of assisted voting, directed voting, violation of the secrecy of the vote/ open voting, signing instead of others, loss of the seal, sticking the self-sticking stamp on more than one ballot, breaches of the procedure of declaring ballots invalid, incompliances between the numbers on printouts and signed voter lists, receptions in polling stations, address-related problems, electricity cuts in polling stations during vote count.
The complainant organizations (“Europe in Law Association” NGO, “Transparency International Anticorruption Center” NGO and “Asparez” Journalists’ Club “NGO) and their observers request the Court to declare TEC and CEC decisions as well as actions/inaction of TEC chairpersons unlawful.
First hearing at the Administrative Court is scheduled on 6th July, at 5 pm (Judge A. Harutyunyan).
On April 2, 2972 COI observers monitored 1521 polling station and registered 2131 electoral violations during the preparation, voting, counting and tabulation of votes.
