Hovik Aghazaryan and Hakob Aslanyan Received a Warning from the Faction

The newspaper "Zhoghovurd" reported on January 21 that members of the National Assembly's "Civil Contract" faction, Hovik Aghazaryan and Hakob Aslanyan, received a warning after the publication of the article titled "The Voting Booth is Contrary: Pashinyan's MPs Propose Remarkable Changes to the Electoral Code."

It is reminded that the ruling party's MPs proposed an amendment to the Electoral Code, stating that the voting booth should be installed in such a way that the voter is facing away from the commission at the time of voting, allowing commission members to observe the voter's movements and steps. In their justification, the MPs mentioned that under the current regulation, when the voter is facing the commission, the secrecy of the vote is compromised, and a common smartphone can be used to photograph the ballot.

However, the proposal did not specify how far a commission member or a trusted person should stand from the voter to avoid seeing how they vote. Following the publication, the MPs were instructed to make corrections to enhance the trustworthiness of the law, with a suggested minimum distance of 5 meters.

It should be noted that this issue does not end here. First, voting with pens often does not work, and voters typically select their preferred ballot from several options, placing it in an envelope while discarding the others. Therefore, someone wishing to monitor the process could easily see which envelope the voter picked even from a distance of 5 meters. On the other hand, in many rural areas, the areas designated for voting are so small that it would be impossible to maintain a distance of 5 meters.

For more details, refer to today’s issue of the newspaper.