At Raffi Hovannisian’s campaign headquarters the phones have not stopped ringing since polling stations opened this morning. 

The candidate’s Facebook page is overflowing with reports of varied violations presently occurring across all regions of  Armenia. By 6pm we have hundreds of reports of major material violations of the election code, including incidents of   ballot-stuffing, intimidation, and rampant vote-buying—which had begun three days earlier in Gyumri, but has spread since then to Vanadzor, Yerevan, and elsewhere. 

At least one polling station was shut down for more than fifteen minutes, during which all campaign representatives were removed from the premises. In another case, an electoral commission president took possession of the official vote log and, against the protests of Hovannisian’s election monitors, accompanied two unknown outsiders into a closed room. The doors remained locked for more than ten minutes. People have been caught voting with fake passports and with passports belonging to others. 

In major cities votes continue to be bought, while in villages mayors are pressuring voters to vote for the incumbent president as gangs of young henchmen oversee precincts. Meanwhile caravans of taxis and buses are being employed in the service of a systematic operation to transport voters hundreds of kilometers away from home, to precincts where they have been registered in “supplemental lists.” In general voting precincts are besieged by buses, which are often full of elderly people. There is video evidence of the elderly being guided to vote for the Republican Party candidate by election officials inside the voting precinct. 

Within the culture of multiple voting, the discovery of vanishing ink is that much more   alarming. At the moment, citizens who have already cast ballots can apply a wet napkin on the last page of their passports, and erase all evidence of their voting within a few moments. In many cases the ink vanishes on its own. 

Hovannisian Campaign Headquarters