Elections Observation NGOs Consider Adopted Constitution in Armenia Illegitimate due to Major Electoral Fraud in the Referendum

10 February 2016

The Citizen Observer Initiative and the European Platform for Democratic Elections (EPDE) published the final report of their observation mission of the referendum on Constitutional Amendments that was conducted on 6 December 2015 in the Republic of Armenia.

“The observation mission recorded gross, multiple, and widespread examples of voting violations and electoral fraud, i.e. restrictions of the rights of observers, mass media representatives, violations of voting procedures, ballot box stuffing, vote buying, exertion of physical force, multiple voting, misreporting of votes during tabulation, and falsification of results protocols. Overall 1,080 violations were reported.”

The report thus concludes that the constitutional referendum did not comply with the norms prescribed in the Code of Good Practice on Referendums of the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission, its results do not reflect the will of the citizens of Armenia and, therefore, the document adopted based on such referendum is illegitimate.

The Citizen Observer Initiative (established in 2013) was formed by 4 non-governmental organizations to observe the national and local elections in Armenia for their compliance with national legislation and international democratic standards.

The European Platform for Democratic Elections (established in 2012) is a coalition of 13 nongovernmental organizations that aims to assist citizens’ election observation in countries of the Eastern Partnership and the Russian Federation, and to contribute to democratic election processes throughout Europe.