– Recently during the meeting with the students President Serzh Sargsyan announced that the citizens should assist state bodies to develop accurate voters’ lists. Should the citizens be responsible for this highly important process and should they be the only hope to verify voters’ lists?
– It is not their responsibility, but the right. The population may or may not exercise their rights. The voters’ lists are compiled on the basis of the citizens’ statements and the information submitted by the sate bodies.
– Yes, but these lists should be verified beforehand in order not to witness such a chaos on the eve of the elections, shouldn’t they?
– No. According to the Electoral Code, voters’ lists may be preliminary and final. The legislation accepts the fact that the lists may be incorrect that is why preliminary lists exist which should be verified and become final in a certain period of time, approximately in 30-40 days. Thus, President’s comments stem from the law. We inform the citizens that the mistakes found in the voters’ lists may be revised. We ask them to inform us about the mistakes they have found in order we efficiantely correct them. The maintenance of voters’ lists is not only the responsibility of the Police. Yes, we maintain them, but we are not the only purveyor of information. If we were the only purveyor, we would never encourage the citizens with such statements. The register gets the information from various sources, doesn’t it? Thus, we have addressed to everyone, and not only to citizens, but to responsible state bodies as well in order they verify the information they submit. We have addressed to the Civil Status Acts Registration Agency of the Ministry of Justice, and we already have the expected results. They are sending the death records for 2003. Though we have periodically received the records, we had no information on the deceased persons who didn’t have any passport details. If the registry office possesses the passport data of a deceased person, it knows where to send the information in order the deceased person to be taken out of the register. But if for some cases they didn’t have any passport and did not know where the deceased person had been registered, such cases had been kept for a long period of time. Nowadays they are sending the information to us; as a result more than 1800 deceased persons will be excluded from the voters’ lists.
– But when somebody dies his relatives immediately submit the documents in order to receive the “memorial money”.
– It concerns the pensioners and never the youth. There are many people who do not officially record the death or even if they record it they never send the passport of a deceased person to be cancelled. As a result it comes out that we have to clarify everything.
– Is it difficult to outline the exact figure of death cases in the communities on quarterly or half-year basis through the community heads or with the help of other services? It is yet very easy particularly in the villages and the village mayor can easily provide those data. Aren’t you holding cooperation with the local-self government bodies or other regional structures?
– We could only indentify death cases of rural communities so far. It is impossible to figure out death cases in multiple apartment buildings and try to identify those cases in the same way. One cannot send a police officer to 2 million voter’s houses.
– There are condominium offices for such issues, isn’t it possible to do that through administrative regions, social or other services?
– Condominium offices do not have available material for such data. Rural communities or private sector houses are quite another issue in this case. The major part of those death cases are identified right from those sectors.
– Finally, there should be some mechanism for the police conducting the resident’s register to keep a data for death cases in quarterly bases, so that those figures do not create major problems by accumulating year by year.
– There still exists one mechanism; the Ministry of Justice should provide data regarding the death cases in the determined deadline. There is no other option besides the procedure identified by the government.
– Do you mean to say it is the fault of the Ministry of Justice?
– They have their fault and the Minister has himself announced about that. And the reason was because the relative of those dead people have never submitted any passport. But they could correct their mistake and now they are sending those details to us. It was inevitable for us to solve this issue in this way. The lists of death cases will be finally corrected only after 10-15 days after the incident.
– Many people left Armenia temporarily or permanently, although they are still registered as RA residents. Shouldn’t those data also be separated anyhow?
– People are left permanently and have never recorded that into the register. The number of people has never decreased in the register, even the opposite it: kept on increasing. If they don’t inform about their leaving the country we will never be able to remove their names from the register. This is the very reason of the increasing voters’ list. We are asking our citizens to support us in this issue. By the way, the voters’ lists are in proper condition. Media says there are many inaccuracies; however the calls coming on the Hotline are not coming that often. This means that the voters’ lists are in proper condition.
– In almost every community and especially in the villages the number of temporary or permanent residents become almost 50 percent in the spring-summer season, and their names naturally exists in the voters’ lists. How is it possible to fix their names, to avoid from the double voting? Should there exist at least some information about permanent or temporary residents flow?
– It seems that the legality of the electoral process majorly depends on the voter lists. But the voter lists only include the names of the people, who should vote. The guarantors of the electoral integrity are the political party poll-watchers, who have very broad powers defined by the electoral code. Aren’t the media representatives and election observers guarantors? These institutes actually function, right? When the attention of these institutes is being drawn to the voter lists we cause a serious damage to the citizens.
– When in the fall the final results of the census are publicized, will the voter lists for 2013 be more accurate. Thus it will become known how many people are missing from the country. Is this correct?
– You are asking me a very difficult question. And you should probably ask this question to the National Statistics Service. But I think there will be certain clarity. I think the NSS will be able to canvass the number of permanent and temporary residents.
– The voter register has approximately 2,5 million voters now. According to the preliminary results of the census the number of citizens is 2 million 870 thousand. This means that we have only 400 thousand teenagers in this country?
– This number has nothing to do with the register books. Compared to the register books the increase of the voters was 170,000 compared to elections 2008. The census doesn’t speak about the actual number of voters. It’s about the population.
– But voters are also included in the voter lists.
– Yes, but let’s speak about the voters’ number because there is a logical difference between the voters’ number and the population determined by the census. The voter lists were added because of two reasons. We have also included the citizens, who turned 18 after 2008 elections. The ones, who were not registered in the past, got registered now. After 2008 the procedure of receiving a passport requires registration. Therefore we made citizens get registered. As a result, over 170,000 citizens entered the registry book.
– It’s been over 15 years that the birth rates have been reducing. Every year they announce that the number of first class students is being decreased and that people are intensively migrating. Under these conditions, how can the voters’ number increase?
– The reasons are quite simple. Even if the birth rate reduces the number of registered is increasing. During the past 4-5 years the number of registered voters has drastically increased.