Heritage Party’s initial evaluation of May 6 parliamentary elections in Armenia: "Heritage campaign headquarters has determined that the parliamentary elections of May 6 in Armenia were corrupted by an extreme number of serious violations throughout the republic. The level of bribery and vote-buying – conducted through numerous methods including phony charities – was at an all-time high, rising dramatically since the prior election and amounting to an unprecedented influence on the election’s outcome. With mass exploitation of administrative resources by the ruling authorities, unequal conditions for the competition of political parties were established at the outset of the campaign. Local governing authorities and heads of several regions and communities used public resources to form an airtight environment of fear that suffocated the entire campaign. Among the many violations, thousands of voters who live in the outer regions were registered to vote in Yerevan addresses, often without the knowledge of owners of those addresses. As a result, people not residing in Yerevan had critical influence in Yerevan polling stations, rigging the outcome of individual-mandate elections in the capital city and resulting in the unanimous victory of authority-supported candidates running for those seats. Serial manipulations of voter lists, designed by the passport department of the police, enabled double-voting and was made plainly evident by the ubiquitous overcrowding in polling stations. Furthermore, the vanishing ink used to stamp passports of already voted citizens also served to facilitate violations (regarding which the Heritage headquarters made a special statement on May 6). We also express deep concern about the use in many single precincts of different-colored pens for voting. Though not a violation of the Electoral Code according to some committees, the practice was a clear and obvious method of violating voter secrecy. Even if the overall electoral process in the polling stations as well as the relatively equal television coverage of the campaign could be considered an improvement over all previous elections, the massive and highly organized outdoor violations performed outside of polling stations on election day totally undermined the legitimacy and legality of these elections. After a full review of the data on protocols and information on violations from the electoral committee representatives of the Heritage party, and analysis of their compliance with the publicized results of the Central Electoral Committee, we will pronounce our final evaluation of the official results of the May 6 elections." Heritage Campaign Headquarters 8 May 2012 Yerevan

---