
ArmInfo. Official data from the Central Election Commission, when compared with actual protocols from local polling stations, reveas the mechanics of large-scale falsifications in the recent elections. A re-verification of the figures, published today, demonstrates exactly how the ruling party's result was manufactured. This opinion was expressed by Benjamin Matevosyan, a well-known political observer at the Politeconomy Research Institute.
He published several screenshots regarding the verification results of four polling stations: Station 26/7: Actual votes for Pashinyan's party: 0; reported to the CEC: 717, Station 16/22: Actual votes for Pashinyan's party: 0; reported to the CEC: 570, Station 30/51: Actual votes for Pashinyan's party: 0; reported to the CEC: 455, Station 36/32: Actual votes for Pashinyan's party: 59; reported to the CEC: 748.
As the political scientist notes, in total, just from the precincts shown on the screen, the Civil Contract party received 4,483 fabricated votes. On average, this yields a deviation (inflation) of about 125 votes per polling station. If this average trend is extrapolated across all 2,005 polling stations nationwide, the total volume of falsifications exceeds 250,000 votes, the analyst believes.
Given a total voter turnout of 1,476,552 people, the share of stolen electoral votes could amount to roughly 17%. This means that Nikol Pashinyan's actual result hovers around 28–30%, which completely deprives the incumbent authorities of any majority. "It's difficult to say right now what the opposition will do about this. What's clear is that the latest myth about "at least the velvet boys and girls aren't rigging elections" has also been shattered," Matevosyan noted.
According to the political scientist, the confusion surrounding the PAP (the Prosperous Armenia Party, which initially received 4% of the vote according to preliminary results, but was then "cut down" by a couple of percentage points by the Central Election Commission losing its parliamentary seats – Ed.) doesn't actually concern any particular party. This issue revolves around whether the government is losing its constitutional majority entirely.
Thanks to active citizen voting, a scenario has emerged in which they have already lost part of their constitutional majority. Now, this situation with the PAP and a recount of the votes could lead to Pashinyan losing any form of a constitutional majority entirely, leaving him with only a simple majority. "Stratfor wrote about this today, among others, and even they understand that this provokes a political crisis," the political analyst concluded.