The Prosperous Armenia Party has initiated a process to challenge the National Assembly election results before the Constitutional Court. The announcement was made by attorney Aram Orbelyan during a press conference.

Late on June 11, the Central Election Commission decided to invalidate the voting results at polling stations No. 10/51 and 35/65. As a result of that decision, Prosperous Armenia lost a total of 213 votes, further reducing its chances of surpassing the 4% threshold required to enter parliament.

According to Orbelyan, the process has already begun. He stated that the party sees two main grounds for applying to the Constitutional Court, Sputnik Armenia reports.

“The Constitutional Court serves two important purposes. One is to invalidate the election results and move toward fairer elections. The second important aspect is to raise the issues, clarify them and put them on record so that, at the very least, it becomes possible to avoid similar problems in the future and clearly understand what happened. Otherwise, the impression is created that organizing elections through such procedures causes no problems, is lawful, normal and consistent with the standards established by our Constitution,” Orbelyan said.

According to his explanation, the Constitutional Court may issue several types of rulings:

• Declare the election results invalid.
• Confirm the existence of electoral violations.
• Determine that no violations occurred.

In the lawyer’s assessment, it is unlikely in practice that the Constitutional Court would conclude that no violations occurred at all. In his view, the more important question is how the court will assess the documented violations and whether it will determine that they affected the election results.

Orbelyan also said that, in parallel with this process, Prosperous Armenia’s legal team has begun appealing the two CEC decisions that invalidated the voting results at the polling stations in question.

“When the CEC summarizes the election results, it must also address the issue of a repeat vote. Whether a decision on a repeat vote is adopted or not will become a new argument in the appeals process. If a repeat vote is held, its results will then be assessed,” Orbelyan said.

According to preliminary data, the votes were distributed as follows: Civil Contract — 49.825%, Strong Armenia — 23.281%, Hayastan Alliance — 9.934%, Prosperous Armenia — 3.996%. Under updated figures, Prosperous Armenia does not pass the 4% threshold required for parties and has requested recounts in several polling stations.