The Number of Voters in Lori Region is higher than the Number of Permanent Residents
17:40, October 28, 2015 | News, Own news
Within the framework assessing the legitimacy of electoral processes, HCA Vanadzor regularly studies different factors which affect or may affect the lawfulness of elections.
As presented yesterday, juxtaposition of data from the RA National Statistical Service and the RA Central Electoral Commission on the numbers of permanent (de jure) population and voters is quite interesting and most probably can be explained only by artificial intervention. The picture becomes clearer when we look at the regional breakdown. Putting side by side the numbers of permanent population of RA regions and Yerevan as of January 1 of 2007, 2008, 2012, and 2013 with the number of voters in electoral lists[1] of the same years, we see that while the number of population has decreased the absolute number of voters and the proportion in the population has increased. Thus the number of voters in Lori Region is 101% of the de jure population. At the same time 113% of de jure population of Vanadzor has the right to vote.
We believe that the RA Police as the body authorized to compile voter lists should:
- Conduct an investigation and publicly explain the discrepancy in these data
- Ensure that the voters lists are accurate by December 6, 2015
[1] Note that there is no data on the number of voters for 2008 presidential elections on the RA Central Electoral Commission website, therefore the numbers are calculated from the number of ballots issued to precinct electoral commissions, which, as prescribed by the RA Electoral Code are 3% more than the number of voters in the respective precinct.