EPDE strongly condemns attacks against human rights defenders
Photo: Viasna lawyer Uladzimir Labkovich and Board member Valiantsin Stefanovich who were searched by authorities. On 14 July law enforcement officers searched homes and offices of several human rights activists and journalists, including EPDE’s member organizations the Human Rights Center “Viasna” and Belarusian Helsinki Committee. The raids on Belarusian human rights defenders must be seen […]
Elections took place in an environment marked by hate speech, biased coverage, suspicions of political influence on electoral bodies
Photo: Conference of the Civic Coalition for Free and Fair Elections, 13 July 2021 Chisinau. Starting from the principles[1] that underpin free and fair elections, set out in international treaties and conventions on civil and political rights and in the Code of Good Practice in Electoral Matters of the European Commission for Democracy through Law […]
Preliminary findings – early parliamentary elections
Sunday’s early parliamentary elections were generally organized efficiently, stated the domestic citizen observer mission from Promo-LEX in its preliminary report. By 10.30 p.m. on election day, Promo-LEX received 538 reports from STOs, 459 of which were qualified as incidents by the analytical team. The number of incidents on the day of the parliamentary elections decreased […]
Final interim report ahead of early parliamentary elections
Promo-LEX Observation Mission presented its fifth monitoring report for the early Parliamentary Elections of 11 July 2021. Legal uncertainties related to the funding of elections and lack of a decision that would regulate the organized transportation of voters, various campaigning activities and instruments, unreported expenses for the election campaign and perpetuation of hate speech and […]
Reflections on the elections and future steps for reforms
During a public discussion hosted by the European Platform for Democratic Elections (EPDE), Armenian election observers and experts reflected on the most important lessons learned from the early parliamentary election, what these could mean for upcoming local elections in the autumn, and what the future steps are for the electoral reform process and how the […]
Independent observer alliance preliminary statement
The “Independent Observer” alliance carried out an observation mission with a team of about 700 people on the voting day of the snap parliamentary elections in the Republic of Armenia. According to the preliminary results of the elections, three political forces have entered the parliament, namely, the Civil Contract Party, the “Armenia” and “I Have […]
Roundtable summary: Post-Election Day – conclusions and recommendations
The European Platform for Democratic Elections (EPDE) hosted a post-election roundtable during which heads of domestic and international election observation missions, as well as international experts and foreign dignitaries discussed conclusions from their election monitoring and formulated recommendations for the future. These elections were notable not just for Armenia, but also in an international context. […]
Fourth interim report early parliamentary elections
Just over two weeks to go until the early parliamentary elections in Moldova and election observers find that several issues could affect the integrity of these elections: the contested process for establishing polling stations abroad, use of administrative resources, involvement of religious denominations in the election campaign, undeclared financial expenses, as well as intimidation/use of […]
Akanates preliminary report and PVT result
The Akanates observation mission conducted both long-term and short-term observation of the June 20, 2021 early parliamentary election in Armenia. The mission deployed 580 observers to a sample of 300 polling stations across the entire territory of Armenia. In addition, 22 mobile observer teams visited another 150 polling stations outside of the sample, and 33 […]
Democratic elections with high voter engagement in reporting violations
Summary of the Independent Observer alliance press conference, video recording of press conference with English interpretation below: The ‘Independent Observer’ alliance concluded that the election was democratic and that violations were not of a significant nature. The voter turnout of more than 49% was similar to the 2018 elections. These elections were unique in that voters were […]