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During the organization and conduct of the 2018 Yerevan City Council elections, around 241 cases of violations were reported, Chairman of the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) Tigran Mukuchyan told a sitting of the National Assembly Standing Committee on State and Legal Affairs on Monday, presenting the activities of his structure in 2018-2019.

According to the official, only in one of the 475 polling stations was a special opinion presented by a member of the commission during the early elections.

"In fact, during the snap Yerevan City Council elections the CEC actions were not disputed to a court, as well as the results of the elections were not marred by court challenges. In 2018-2019 we held local elections in 170 communities. In 2018, 3 days were allocated for those elections, and in 2019 – 4 days. During this period, 1,011 candidates for community heads and councilmen were nominated, while 95 candidates withdrew themselves. No candidate was denied a registration,” Mukuchyan said.

He said the commission received applications for election recounts in rare cases over the past two years, adding even if the application was not submitted by a competent subject, the commission conducted election recounts on its own initiative.

Mukuchyan said that in 2018-2019, CEC received 18 applications for recounts, 6 of which were submitted by incompetent subjects.

The CEC chairman said that they have a proposal on making changes to the Electoral Code.

"There are problems in terms of holding snap elections, as the separate deadlines set by the Electoral Code are not fully clarified, and some processes need to be implemented earlier, but their deadlines are set later. As a result, during the organization of elections, we try to arrange many processes sooner or later than expected,” he said.

“We believe that it will be much more correct if those timeframes in the Electoral Code are harmonized and the whole process is regulated correctly. In addition, we believe that during the snap elections, as it is the case with national elections, 28 days should be allocated for the campaign, since we think that the [current] 14 days of campaign in the snap elections are rather a short period of time to present the views and approaches of the political forces to the voters,” Mukuchyan stated.