Civic Groups Report ‘Evidence Of Election Fraud

A coalition of Armenian civil society organizations claimed on Wednesday to have obtained evidence that at least several hundred ballots were cast in place of citizens who did not vote in the April 2 parliamentary elections.

The Citizen Observer grouping, which deployed over 3,000 election observers, began scrutinizing on Tuesday the nationwide lists of all Armenians who took part in the vote, according to the Central Election Commission (CEC).

Publication of those signed lists was one of several major anti-fraud amendments to the Electoral Code enacted last fall in line with an agreement reached by the Armenian government and the opposition. Another amendment led to the introduction of electronic voter authentication devices in all polling stations. These measures were meant to prevent multiple voting by government supporters.

In the run-up to the elections, the Citizen Observer asked Armenians who did not plan to vote or live abroad to register on its website so that in can verify whether other people voted illegally on behalf of them. According to Tigran Yegorian, a Citizen Observer legal expert, around 10,000 such citizens responded to the appeal.

“We have compared data from only about 100 of the 2,009 precincts and found that there was voting in place of 800 of the 10,000 people who declared their non-participation in the elections beforehand,” Yegorian told RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am). This number may well increase as the Citizen Observer is continuing to examine the lists, he said.

Yegorian also said that several other people have personally informed civic activists that they or their relatives did not vote but are shown by the official documents to have cast ballots.

Shushan Davtian, a 20-year-old woman currently studying in Europe, also looked at the lists posted on the CEC website and found that someone else forged her signature and voted in her place. “Frankly, I was very surprised,” she told RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am) by phone.

Davtian suggested that officials in her precinct in Yerevan’s Avan district may have known that she will not be in Armenia on election day.

The CEC did not immediately respond to the Citizen Observer claims.

Under the Electoral Code, all complaints relating to suspected multiple voting had to be submitted to the commission by Wednesday morning. Yegorian said the Citizen Observer could not meet that deadline because the CEC delayed the publication of the signed lists by several hours on Tuesday. The commission should therefore agree to consider a formal complaint that will be lodged by the civic groups later this week, he said.

Western election observers and Armenian opposition parties and blocs did not report significant cases of multiple voting in Sunday’s elections. The opposition forces also did not allege serious irregularities in the post-election voter lists as of Wednesday evening.