On the day of the snap elections, observers from the Independent Observer observation mission noticed numerous violations in the polling stations. Violations of voting secrecy were reported in 52% of polling stations, and propaganda incidents were observed inside many polling stations. In particular, 37.5% of those incidents were in favor of the Armenia alliance, 15.7% for I Have Honor, 14% for Civil Contract, and 4.7% for Prosperous Armenia and the National Democratic Pole. Daniel Ioannisyan, the program coordinator of the Union of Informed Citizens NGO, spoke about this today at the press conference held at the Media Center.
700 observers from Independent Observer carried out their mission in 38 territorial electoral commissions and in 2,008 local electoral commissions. They also observed 1,500 cameras. According to Ioannisyan, there were incidents in 10% of polling stations where voters were not given all the ballots, and 10% noted incidents where ballots were brought out. Incidents of another person’s presence within the voting booth was noted in ⅓ of polling stations. In 10% of the polling stations, it was noticed that the helpers in the voting booth did not obviously ask who the voter wanted to vote for; they were simply physically present in the voting booth.
According to the Independent Observer’s report, not all voters were given ballots in 3 polling stations, and as Ioannisyan said, the Civil Contract ballot was not handed out in 2 polling stations in Yerevan and in one in Goris. “Let me remind you that the data is only from our observed polling stations.” Special cases of arguments and fights were observed. They took place in case of counting of votes, and according to the report, they did not affect the will of the voters. In total, 52 significant violations were registered on election day, for which 9 crime reports and 1 administrative complaint were submitted.
According to Ioannisyan, in general, in addition to the pre-election campaign period, Independent Observer sent 30 crime reports to law enforcement, the vast majority of which referred to cases of electoral bribery. In second place are other manifestations of illegal influence on voters. “Regarding the free expression of the will of the voters, I must say that the long-term observers have received numerous alerts about the distribution of electoral bribes and the illegal influence of employers on the voters. In particular, there was an abundance of alerts about the distribution of electoral bribes by the Armenian alliance for different forces, as well as the cases of illegal influence on the subordinates by large enterprises. Some of those enterprises included Gazprom, the Armenian Electrical Network, the Zangezur Copper and Molybdenum Combine, etc. There have been numerous alerts and facts about the compulsion to participate in that force’s rallies and to vote for it in a number of local self-government bodies and their subordinate structures,” Daniel Ioannisyan said.
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According to him, there were essential, but fewer allegations of abuse by Civil Contract of their administrative resources to participate in pre-election rallies and assemblies. “At the same time, I must note that these concerns dramatically increased along the backdrop of many instances of violation of voter secrecy on election day. Within this context, we attribute these cases to the tendency of voters not getting a Civil Contract ballot in some polling stations. Taking into account that these violations are latent, we assume that there were more instances.”The observers did not find duplicates in the voter lists, but there were about a hundred voters with the same name and surname. They were not the same people; their data simply coincided.
Nelly Babayan
