By Gabriel Armas-Cardona

This is a response to the recent “Call for Urgent Measures for Ensuring the Legitimacy of Electoral Processes in Armenia” put out by a group of NGOs including the Transparency International Anti-corruption Center and the Helsinki Citizens' Assembly Vanadzor Office. While I agree that their suggested electoral reforms are good, almost none of the suggestions will ensure public trust and a sense of legitimacy in the government. Instead, what Armenia needs to focus on is developing effective institutions, with or without better election procedures.

The Minor Impact of Electoral Reforms

The three main criticisms of the NGOs are the misuse of administrative resources, inflated voter lists and distortion of voting processes. Each of these issues undoubtedly affects the quality of elections in Armenia, but it’s less clear how much each issue affects a sense of legitimacy in the government. The core reason that fixing these issues would not cause a political change in Armenia is that multiple polls demonstrate that most Armenians will continue to vote for the dominant parties. Removing election irregularities will only better express what the voters are saying: keep the same parties in power.

The minor significance of inflated voter lists and distortion of voting processes

Two of the article’s key points are the inflated voter lists and that the distortion of voting processes jeopardize the legitimacy of the election. The inflated voter lists point to the creation of fake people that will vote for whoever created them. The distortion of voting processes refers to the 17,889 inconsistencies found during the 2012 election. Both issues sound bad, but as the Gallup exit poll matched the results of the 2012 parliamentary election, their impact is minor. These problems are not large enough to sway an election, so fixing them will not change who is in power.

The minimal impact of these irregularities is supported by ODIHR’s characterization of the 2012 parliamentary election as “competitive, vibrant and largely peaceful.” There is no doubt these irregularities are a problem, but the amount of irregularities is dropping with time and thus their ability to affect an election is also dropping. As long as there is a clear winner in elections, the impact of these irregularities is negligible. More work needs to be done to bring this number closer to zero, but these irregularities are low on the priority list compared to the much larger systemic issues like corruption that make people distrust the government.

Decreasing the Misuse of Administrative Resources: Good Idea for the Long-Term

Decreasing the misuse of administrative resources could have an impact on elections but only over the long term. As long as smaller parties are able to connect to voters and have an opportunity to try to win their votes, then the misuse of administrative resources cannot dramatically change an election. The misuse of administrative resources gives the party in power an unfair benefit over other parties, especially new ones. And, if smaller parties are not able to reach out to voters, then there could be a more serious problem as voters are not able to make a reasoned choice of which party they prefer. However, again, considering how much popular support the dominant party has, this one issue can’t change an election. Fixing the misuse of administrative resources will lead to a more balanced playing field for the parties, but it won’t lead to political change any time soon.

Promoting Trust in Elections by Institutions doing their Jobs Impartially

The big problem with the distrust Armenians have regarding elections and the government is that they don’t trust the institutions that are meant to ensure the legitimacy of the process. If the institutions meant to guard the election are themselves untrustworthy, then there is no reason to believe their work would be impartial.

As the Urgent Call itself points out, there were many instances of alleged violations that the key institutions tasked with protecting the election did nothing about. With the large number of reported violations, the police had many opportunities to investigate the allegations. Unfortunately, the police failed to investigate these cases and no one was punished in court. The first part of ensuring that violators are punished, and thus deterred from committing future violations, falls on the police to investigate electoral crimes.

While the 2012 parliamentary elections was one of the best elections conducted in Armenia, there were many incidents of violations that the police did not investigate. As the Urgent Call points out, individual people recorded numerous examples of irregularities. A reporter from CivilNet recorded some of these incidents, piecing together discrete incidents into evidence of a larger conspiracy, and reported them to the police. The police responded with a letter essentially saying “nobody saw anything” without even questioning the reporter. The people see that the police are not willing to investigate these incidents, damaging any confidence the people have in the police generally and destroying it when it comes to ensuring fair elections. A vital first step to increasing popular trust in elections is to have the police investigate violations of the elections.

Investigation isn’t enough; a court must punish the violators. Even if the police do investigate violations, without a prosecutor to bring the case to court and a judge willing to impartially weigh the evidence, public faith won’t increase. With the lack of independent and impartial judges, it will be a challenge to ensure violators are found guilty, but seeing this punishment is the only way for people to believe that elections are not just a tool of the government to keep power.

When there is faith in Armenia’s electoral system, then 1) new parties will have a fair chance to win elections, 2) citizens will pay more attention to who they vote for, and 3) fair play and higher standards will be expected from the parties. All of these will lead to more mature elections where the parties spend less time criticizing each other and spend more time developing good policy platforms for Armenia. When only 12-13% of Armenians having confidence in the government, systemic change is needed, not just tinkering around the edges.

Gabriel Armas-Cardona is a lawyer in New York State and was a legal fellow at the Office of the Human Rights Defender of the Republic of Armenia. He regularly comments on the politics and human rights situation of Armenia on his blog.