The elections will be held in a simple proportional system, without rating lists

On April 1, the National Assembly passed the draft amendments to the Electoral Code in two 24-hour readings, proposing to abandon the so-called “rating” or regional lists and move to a simple proportional system, ie closed party lists. This means that in the June 20 elections, voters will vote only for the parties. It should be reminded that in the previous elections, in addition to the closed national list, by which the citizens voted for the parties, there were also open regional lists, by which the voters voted for a specific candidate nominated in their constituency.

As it is known, in addition to this change, a bigger package of changes was put into circulation by the “My Step” faction of the National Assembly, which, by the way, envisaged raising the gender quota. The adopted draft refers only to the issue of changing the electoral system, it is possible that the deputies will refer to the complete package in the near future, although it is not clear yet when the National Assembly will be able to discuss and adopt that package.

In particular, according to Lilit Makunts, the leader of the “My Step” faction, the small draft under discussion changes only the provisions on the proportional electoral system, but “it does not mean giving up the entire Electoral Code. We will discuss the comprehensive package in the near future. ”

The authors of the bill explain the urgency of the electoral system by the fact that the Central Electoral Commission should be able to adapt the organizational work related to the elections to the new rules of the game, which are defined by the adopted amendments.

Co-rapporteur of the project, Deputy Minister of Justice Kristine Grigoryan stated that back in 2019, the Government adopted a strategy, which mentioned the elimination of regional lists of candidates and the transition to a simple proportional system, so this is not an unexpected change at all.

According to the authors of the bill, the rejection of the regional lists will help the communities to vote for the programs and not for individuals or authorities. The main concern of the opponents is that the rejection of the regional lists will reduce the representation of the regions in the parliament.

The proposed change was also supported by women MPs from the “My Step” faction, who did not mention in their arguments the fact that the simple proportional electoral system provides some guarantees for women candidates to be elected, and in the case of ratings, regardless of the quota applied, there is no such guarantee.

It should be noted that the bill authored by the deputies of “My Step” faction, Hamazasp Danielyan, Vahagn Hovakimyan, some deputies not included in the faction, Arman Babajanyan, Sergey Bagratyan, received 82 votes in favor. The opposition “Bright Armenia” did not take part in the voting, and the deputies of “Prosperous Armenia” did not attend the sitting at all. This circumstance does not allow claiming that the bill was adopted by political consensus.

Full text in Armenian