Epress.am News from Armenia
In the course of Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Armenia, 3 122 independent and impartial observers of the local Citizen Observer monitoring mission recorded a total of 1918 voting irregularities at 1521 polling stations that are currently being looked into.
Below is Citizen Observer’s statement summing up its findings:
Violations throughout the day (07:00-20:00)
Total number of irregularities – 471
Violation of the rights of observers, media representatives, proxies or visitors – 47
Technical equipment failures – 184
Presence of unauthorized persons – 88
Pressure and violence – 16
Congestion (of people and cars) – 136
Preparation (07:00-08:00)
Total number of irregularities – 300
Irregularities in the conduct of the precinct commission – 49
Incorrect voting room logistics – 163
Availability of propaganda materials – 19
Problems with voting items – 8
Other – 61
Voting process (08:00-20:00)
Total number of irregularities – 1147
Irregularities in the conduct of the precinct commission – 54
Problems with confirmation/registration of a person’s identity – 121
Violations or attempts to violate the secrecy of voting – 243
Violations of the procedure for rendering assistance to a voter – 116
Instances of taking out or bringing in voting items – 77
Distribution or promise of election bribes – 5
Cases of propaganda or anti-propaganda – 26
Voter tampering – 178
Repeated voting or voting instead of another person – 77
Violations of the right to vote – 13
Other – 237
Summing up the currently available data, the Citizen Observer initiative identifies the following issues and therefore insists that the issue of public confidence in elections remains unresolved:
1. Controlled and open voting;
2. Voter bribery;
3. Accumulation of people, confusion;
4. Poor-quality election commission work;
5. Failure of technical innovations;
6. Partial inaction of police at polling stations;
7. Overcomplicated voting procedure.