Electoral reforms: Human rights activist calls for revising voter register

Inaccuracies in the voter register deal largely with those citizens of Armenia, who have either left the country or had their names changed, whereas many others who are permanent residents are not de-facto included in the lists, according to Daniel Ioannisyan, the president of the Union of Informed Citizens

At a public debate devoted to the electoral reforms, he dwelled on the advantages of their proposed model banning the use passports past their expiry date when doing transactions such as opening bank accounts, voting, or being admitted to work. Noting that the practice has proven functional in a range of countries, including Georgia, Ioannisyan expressed regret that it is not applicable in Armenia.

"All those persons who are abroad and have forgotten about citizenship of Armenia or have died must not be on the voter registers. Those people's passports are or will soon be past their expiry. By excluding those people, we are essentially shortening the voter registers. By cutting down as many as 188,000 [names], we approximate it to the population quantity we virtually have," he said.

Hovhannisyan asserted that by ruling out identity documents past expiry they are also reducing the risks of voting instead of absent citizens.