YEREVAN (Noyan Tapan)–The Armenian parliament unanimously adopted a revised election code in a Friday session with a vote of 103 for–0 against. Over 30 articles in the election code were revised to correspond to the resolution passed on February 5.
According to the new election code–candidates need only 500 signature instead of 2000 for majoritarian representation. The code also regulates government press aganecies to offer equal campaign coverage for candidates.
Two suggestions by members of the parliament were rejected by the authoring team. The first suggestion by ARF member Rouben Hakopian called for an amendment that prohibitted the running of local officials into parliament. The second suggestion called for a new system of collecting votes–where votes would be collected first locally–then regionally and then submitted to the Central Electoral Commission–instead of the current system where votes are first collected regionally and then submitted to the CEC.
