The voting code of Armenia is once again going through reforms. As during the last process, this time there are also many debatable issues and one of them is the issue of having judges be part of the electoral commissions, however the parliamentary opposition is against that.
The oppositionists base their decision in that judges are state officials and according to the Constitution of Armenia, they don’t have the right to complete other paid worok besides scientific, pedagogical activities. “But I don’t think that that’s right because when judges become commission members, first of all, they work temporarily and keep their stable job, secondly, they don’t get their salaries from the Central Electoral Commission, but rather they get their stable salary from wherever they work,” said president of the state legal issues committee of the National Assembly Raffik Petrosyan during a press conference. According to him, judges are not violating any Constitutional amendment by joining the electoral commissions; “on the contrary, the participation of judges sometimes helps analyze, explain correctly and interpret the laws and make decisions.” “So, they become members of the electoral commission and take on the responsibility whether they like it or not,” said R. Petrosyan.
Petrosyan’s debater was representative of the “Rule of Law” party Hovhannes Markaryan who said that the “Rule of Law” party has always been in favor of having “elections based on a maximum proportional list”. According to Markaryan, that’s why the “Rule of Law” party and the ARF did everything they could to change the majority-proportional list and it did, but that wasn’t enough. “We are in favor of having a 100% proportional list and that’s the best way that the Armenian parliament’s political field can be united with political figures with high reputations,” said the “Rule of Law” representative. He also says that it’s important to count the number of voters five hours after the voting and to those who think that that’s impossible, H. Markaryan said the following: “We have taken the responsibility. We can sign a contract with “HyePost” with a small amount of money…we also have special services through which the people who are far from the polls can bring their registration to the electoral commission. It’s possible.” H. Markaryan fears that if the handicapped and ill people get the right to vote through the means of their caretakers, then there will be a chance for electoral fraud. “During the local government elections, there was a community where we allowed the caretakers of the handicapped and ill people to vote on behalf of them. Eighty-percent of the participants said that they couldn’t vote on their own and had their caretakers take part in the elections on behalf of them,” said the “Rule of Law” representative and added that he didn’t remember the name of that community. According to H. Markaryan, it’s possible and the Venetian convention has also pointed out the fact that it’s possible to see electoral fraud and hurt the entire process. As for calling back electoral commission members, member of the Armenian Republican Party and the “Popular Deputy” faction Raffik Petrosyan said that they are against that because when someone is appointed as member of an electoral commission, that means that he has the right to solve state, social and governmental issues and that shouldn’t depend on this or that political orientation. “The commission must work on its own and calling members back every now and then means to hurt the electoral process and make the commissions depend on the given political power,” says Raffik Petrosyan. Petrosyan also places high emphasis on the proposal made by MP Arshak Sadoyan about supervising the voting process online. According to him, this is a good way to prevent all kinds of violations. He says that calculations show that it’s necessary to have nearly half a million dollars to do that. “Nobody, including the Republican party isn’t against that. Personally, I’m for it,” said Petrosyan about Sadoyan’s proposal. Concluding his comments about the debate, he said: “All these debates prove that the only important thing is not making changes in the voting code. The important thing is the political will of the Armenian government, the Central Electoral Commission, the parliamentary candidates and voters to obey the laws because the current voting code isn’t bad, if people do what’s written in the code.”