Epress.am News from Armenia
There were a small number of violations recorded at polling stations during the June 8 mayoral election in the southern Armenian city of Goris. Everything happened outside, where the two candidates' "people" supervised the election process and guided citizens. This was conveyed to Epress.am by Transparency International Anti-Corruption Center elections observer Babken Der-Grigorian, who was stationed at one of the polling stations.
According to him, the most he could do was oblige police officers not to permit these people to stand and act less than 50 meters from the polling station.
According to official data, winning the election was former Syunik regional governor (marzpet) Surik Khachatryan's protégé, Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) candidate Vachagan Adunts, who gathered 4,743 of the votes. His opponent, Hrayr Yolyan (no party affiliation), gathered 2,959 of the votes, while 510 ballots (almost 7%) were declared invalid.
According to Der-Grigorian, those providing "guidance" to voters weren't only supporters of the HHK candidate — Yolyan's supporters also attempted to secure victory this way.
Of the violations inside the polling station, the observer isolated the incident of finding 3 envelopes containing 2 ballots, which, according to him, may indicate an attempt to organize carousel voting.
"On the whole, the elections were held peacefully, since the opposition candidate's name was not on the ballot," he said.
Recall, two of the four registered candidates recused themselves on the last day of the campaign.