CODICES

ARM-2003-2-002

a) Armenia / b) Constitutional Court / c)  / d) 16-06-2003 / e) DCC-425 / f) On the dispute on the outcome of the elections of the National Assembly by the majority system in Constituency no. 50 held on 25 May 2003 / g) Tegekagir (Official Gazette) / h) ..

 

Keywords of the Systematic Thesaurus:

 
 
4.9.1

Institutions - Elections and instruments of direct democracy - Electoral Commission.

4.9.7.1

Institutions - Elections and instruments of direct democracy - Preliminary procedures - Electoral rolls.

4.9.9.8

Institutions - Elections and instruments of direct democracy - Voting procedures - Counting of votes.

5.3.40

Fundamental Rights - Civil and political rights - Right to self fulfilment.


Keywords of the alphabetical index:

 

Election, vote count, court judgment, influence on results / Election, invalidity.

 

Headnotes:

 

Where a court of general jurisdiction delivers a judgment in which it makes a finding of fact that the process of the summarisation of the voting results in a precinct was flawed, and it is impossible to determine who the elected candidate in the constituency is, the elections in the constituency must be declared invalid.

 

Summary:

 

Two candidates, who participated in the National Assembly elections in Constituency no. 50 held on 25 May 2003, appealed to the Constitutional Court for a declaration that the elections in that constituency were invalid. The candidates argued that violations of the Electoral Code had taken place during the organisation and conduct of the elections, and that those violations had influenced the results of the elections.

 

The appellants argued, inter alia, that the precinct electoral commissions had violated the prescribed manner of filling in summarisation protocols, that other persons had voted in the place of those who should have voted, that the constituency electoral commission did not properly process the applications addressed to it by the competent persons, and that the constituency electoral commission did not take into account the judgment of Shirak Marz delivered by the first instance court on 30 May 2003 concerning voting results in three precincts (Precinct no. 1545, no. 1551 and no. 1564). The first instance court had initiated the verification of voting results in the above-mentioned precincts and had discovered 504 ballot papers without signatures of the electoral commission members (Precinct no. 1545) and 151 uncancelled ballot papers that should have been cancelled. The appellants alleged in particular that those discoveries and other flaws in electoral documents had a substantive influence on the number of inaccuracies, which excluded the possibility of determining who was the elected candidate.

 

As to the appellants' allegation that the constituency electoral commission did not take into account the above-mentioned judgment of the first instance court, the respondent argued that the constituency electoral commission had neither discussed nor based the summarisation of voting results on the judgment because that judgment had been adopted on 30 May and the commission had received it at the end of that day, that is to say, at the end of the period provided by the Electoral Code for the summarisation of voting results.

 

In order to support the allegation that other persons had voted in the place of those who should have voted, the appellants placed before the Court a list of 97 voters who, according to them, had not voted in the elections and instead of their true passport data, false data had been entered into the voters' lists. At the request of the Constitutional Court, the Police carried out a check of the passport data, and in 36 cases the identity of passport was confirmed.

 

According to the Shirak Marz judgment of 30 May 2003 of the first instance court concerning the voting results in three precincts (Precinct no. 1545, no. 1551 and no. 1564), 504 unsigned ballot papers had been discovered in Precinct no. 1545; and 151 ballot papers that should have been cancelled but had not been cancelled had been discovered in Precinct no. 1551.

 

While examining the register of Precinct no. 1551, the Constitutional Court found that the precinct electoral commission, in violation of Article 60 of the Electoral Code and relevant decision of the Central Electoral Commission, had not properly prepared the protocol of summarisation of voting results. That being so, the Constitutional Court found that it created a suspicion concerning the legality of the summarisation of the voting results in that precinct and amounted to a basis for declaring the official number of cancelled ballot papers in the precinct and in the whole constituency unreliable.

 

Bearing in mind that in Precinct no. 1551 the difference in the votes cast for the first two candidates was 94, the Constitutional Court held, that had the 151 uncancelled ballot papers been actually cancelled and entered into that precinct's summarisation protocol as cancelled ballot papers, it would have led to a situation, where it would have been impossible to determine the elected candidate.

 

The Court declared the elections in the above-mentioned constituency invalid and transmitted the materials on the violations discovered in the process of the examination of the case to the General Prosecutor's Office for appropriate examination.

 

Languages:

 

Armenian