YEREVAN, APRIL 15, ARMENPRESS. The Government of Armenia plans to submit the edited draft electoral code to the National Assembly on April 18.   The Government's Chief of Staff –Minister Davit Harutyunyan told about at the National Assembly during the discussion of the electoral code in the format 4+4+4.  “As we have short time limits for the adoption of the electoral code, and it has to receive three readings, we plan to submit it to the National Assembly on April 18. We cannot include all the proposals upon which we can reach a consensus in the draft, but if there are common positions we can make relevant amendments before the second reading”, “Armenpress” reports Harutyunyan mentioning.

Harutyunyan added that based on the results of the discussions in 4+4+4 format, the authorities have analyzed the proposals of the opposition and the civil society, and made a decision to include the two important ones in the draft electoral code irrespective of whether the opposition or civil society representatives will announce in the future that there was a consensus upon them or no.

“One of those proposals is the investment of electronic voting by fingerprints. This means that the fingerprint of each voter is recorded when voting. After the elections the fingerprints from the entire republic are collected and are compared through software to see if the same fingerprint has been repeated. This refers not only to the civilians participating in the elections, but also servicemen, in order to eradicate many doubts”, Harutyunyan clarified.

The next proposal to be included in the draft electoral code is that on the next day after the elections, from 12:00 to 18:00, proxies of political forces and representatives of observer organizations can submit a request and obtain data on the citizens that participated in the voting in any polling station. “They can submit the relevant request and on the next day, from 12:00 to 18:00, will obtain the data of which numbers of the given polling station participated in the polls. There are no limitations on the polling stations. They can submit such requests for any polling station”. Harutyunyan said, adding that these two proposals will be included in the draft electoral code to be submitted to the National Assembly on April 18.