All the polling stations in Armenia are closed by 20:00. The parliamentary elections are over. The commissions will start counting the votes.
50.93% of eligible voters participated in Armenia’s parliamentary elections. Armen Smbatyan, CEC president secretary, told reporters in Central Electoral Commission (CEC).
“I think various states will learn the elements of this new format so that to avoid complaints later. The new technique only has one problem: sometimes there are crowds since scanner recognizes with difculty the ngerprints of elderly people. If other countries decide to apply these mechanisms, they must consider this,” he said.
Today we observe and will not make assessments on the voting process,” he said, adding that the OSCE/ODIHR accredited 300 observers for Armenia’s parliamentary election. “Our observers observe the election throughout Armenia. We are grateful to Armenia’s government and people for the warm reception,” Ignacio Sanchez Amor said.
“Number of citizens in Yerevan eligible to vote comprises 845.804, and number of participants is 283.453 or 33.51% of voters,” he said.
The Police HQ told 10 of the reports were registered in Yerevan, 2 in Lori, 3 in Shirak, 5 in Ararat, 1 in Gegharkunik and 3 in Vayots Dzor provinces.
“There is no serious reason for concern. The technical issues of equipments which happened, interested our party as well, of course. Armenia is one of the exceptional countries where a top-modern electoral system has been introduced, which is not only the best from a legal point of view, but is also rather difficult with electoral solutions. Tens of thousands devices have been installed in polling stations, and the malfunctioning of a few cannot shadow the normal process of the election.”
“Our proxies were in one of the polling stations, where cameras have been installed on the polling booths. Of course, commission members assured that they don’t work, in any case, our proxies insisted that they were eliminated. There are also calls that some people demand that people took photos of the ballots, they are being checked now.”
The European Union expects that the election in Armenia proceeds without issues and in line with democratic principles, Piotr Switalski, head of the EU delegation to Armenia, told reporters in the 9/18 polling station in the S. Spandaryan School.
Based on the results received from 2009 polling stations, the Central Electoral Commission announces that 344.714 citizens cast their votes.
