Yesterday the chairman of the Central Electoral Commission Tigran Mukuchyan summarized the final results of the June 20 special parliamentary elections.

Mukuchyan said that four applications were submitted to invalidate the results of the CEC elections, one of which was in violation of the established deadlines.

One of the applications was submitted by the "Armenia" alliance. After reading the justifications of the application, the representative of the central headquarters of the alliance Aram Vardevanyan mentioned that he wanted to draw special attention to several points of the application.

One of those points was that the servicemen voted with military booklets.

"It is not accidental that people participate in the elections with a passport or an identification card equal to a passport. If this does not imply any importance, I think, for example, in the case of people over the age of 18 who study in educational institutions, it might be a student certificate or a driver's license. No, the electoral legislation provides for a passport or identification card, which, according to the legislation, is equivalent to a passport. Of course, I am not the first to present this to a professional commission, but the public should know that passports serve as a mechanism for verification, electoral fraud, and prevention of electoral violations, both in cases of double voting in polling stations and in general. But we have a situation where, for example, servicemen vote with a military card, which is neither a passport nor an identification card, it does not have the protective means typical of a passport or identification card," Vardevanyan stated.

The CEC chairman reversed Aram Vardevanyan, saying that the servicemen have always voted with military booklets.

"The Electoral Code defines three types of identity documents for citizens: passport, identification card, and biometric passport. The servicemen have always voted with military booklets, because none of the three mentioned documents, which are not directly available to them, they cannot use it. It is an identity document for this category of people, there is no problem here," Mukuchyan said.

Article 66 of the Electoral Code refers to the regulations on verifying the identity of voters and voter registration. The first point of the article says, "Identity card for a voter is an identification card, biometric passport, non-biometric passport, temporary document replacing a passport or identification card issued by an authorized body, a voter identification document in a penitentiary institution, and for servicemen a military certificate or military book if they are registered (vote) in the list of voters compiled by the military unit."

Thus, Tigran Mukuchyan is right, because the Electoral Code allows servicemen to take part in the voting with a military card or a certificate.

As for Aram Vardevanyan's assertions, although he does not directly say that the participation of soldiers in voting with military IDs is a violation of the law, but notes that military IDs do not have the protection of a passport or ID card, which he considers problematic. During a conversation with reporters after the CEC session, Verdevanyan reiterated that voting with military booklets contains risks.
"Voting with the military booklet, it seems to be the position of the CEC. It's like "what else can we do, they can't vote with a passport." The law states the following: the general rule - passport, identification card, or biometric passport, the voting is conducted in these three ways. Many people also have a passport problem  One person, for example, lost his passport. Could he, for example, use a driver's license to vote. No, he could not. Do you know why the opportunity to vote with a passport is intended to be a verification mechanism? Do you imagine the mechanisms of falsification of a military booklet, how many can they be, can you imagine what abuses can take place?" stated Vardevanyan.

During the elections, the military card for soldiers was considered an identity document since 1999. Paragraph 3 of Article 55 of the Electoral Code (invalid) adopted in 1999 states, "The identity document is the passport, the document replacing the passport, for military officers - non-commissioned officers - the military certificate, and for other servicemen - the military card."

This Code was in force until 2011, when no changes were made to Article 5, Clause 3 during the elections, regarding the military ID card being considered an identity document.

In fact, according to the Electoral Code adopted during the presidency of Robert Kocharyan, who heads the pre-election list of the "Armenia" alliance, and which was in force until the end of his presidency, the military book and the certificate were considered as identification documents for the servicemen.

Anna Sahakyan