Armenia’s Central Electoral Commission (CEC) has explained why it will not hold repeat voting in three polling stations where the results of the June 7 parliamentary elections were annulled.
In a statement on Monday, the CEC said that a re-vote is not automatically required after invalidating results, and that any decision must ensure fairness and avoid creating new distortions in the electoral process, especially risks such as tactical voting.
Below is the full statement released by the CEC:
“The Central Electoral Commission should not automatically schedule a repeat vote after declaring election results in any polling station invalid. When making such a decision, the Commission must take into account the protection of voters’ true will and the assurance of the legality of election results. Therefore, the CEC must choose a remedy that is necessary under the given circumstances, proportionate, and does not create greater distortion than the violation it is intended to correct.
In the case of a partial re-vote, the following issue arises. Voters who participated in the main election cast their ballots at a time when the overall results were not known. They did not know who was leading, what the vote gap was, which political force would pass the threshold, or what impact their vote would have on the final outcome.
Meanwhile, voters in a repeat election would vote in a different situation, where the overall picture may already be known (in this case, 99.8% of votes had been counted). In such conditions, voters’ choices may be influenced not by their original political preference and free _expression_ of will, but by calculations aimed at altering the already known result. This risk is commonly referred to as tactical voting.
The Venice Commission has also acknowledged that partial re-voting is not always an appropriate remedy. In a 2025 urgent report, it states that if violations concern only certain polling stations, the response may in principle be limited to those stations. However, it also notes an important exception: partial re-voting is not appropriate if, due to the possibility of tactical voting, it cannot ensure a fair electoral outcome.
From the perspective of equal suffrage, the issue is also clear. A repeat vote could violate electoral equality, as one group of voters would be placed in significantly different initial conditions compared to others.
In this regard, the position of the Constitutional Court of Armenia is also important, according to which, when assessing the consequences of electoral violations, the rights of voters who cast their ballots lawfully must also be protected. If the will of voters in the main election has already been lawfully expressed, then a subsequent re-vote should not have a secondary or calculated impact on that will.
Therefore, when deciding on a re-vote, the CEC must also consider whether it would ensure the same free and equal environment as on the main election day. Does the known result create a risk of tactical voting? Are the rights of voters who already voted lawfully being undermined? Have sources of illegal or corrupt influence been neutralized?
If the answers to these questions indicate that a re-vote would not ensure a free, equal, and fair outcome, then it should not be held. Not ordering a re-vote in such a case does not mean ignoring the violation; it means not choosing a remedy that could further distort the will of voters.
The CEC must be guided not by a mechanical logic of repeat elections, but by the constitutional principles of free and equal elections, proportionality, and protection of voters’ genuine will, as an independent body overseeing the legality of elections under the Constitution.”
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On June 11, the CEC declared invalid the voting results in polling stations 35/65 and 10/51 from the parliamentary elections held in Armenia on June 7. This decision was based on entries made in the logs by representatives of the “Strong Armenia” party, stating that voting by military personnel had been organized at an unscheduled time in those polling stations. A request to invalidate the results in these polling stations had been submitted by Daniel Ioannisyan, a representative of the “Independent Observer” monitoring organization.
On June 12, the CEC also invalidated the voting results in polling station 12/13. This decision was based on the fact that the ballot paper of the “National Democratic Pole” party had not been available in that polling station.