Citizens of Yerevan to elect the first City Council
30.05.2009 14:33

Lusine Vasilyan
`Radiolur’

The elections for the Yerevan City Council are expected tomorrow. For
the first time residents of the capital city will elect members of the
Council, thus indirectly giving preference to this or that candidate
for the Mayor of Yerevan. On the eve of the electrons it’s worth
reminding how the results of the voting will be calculated, and which
the mechanism of distribution of mandates is.

The elections for the Yerevan City Council will be held with the
application of the proportional representation system, the whole area
of the capital will be viewed as one multi-mandate electoral district.

The Electoral Code states that the elections for the City Council
should be organized with the same principle and procedure used during
the proportional representative elections for the National Assembly.
Therefore, the results of the voting will be summed up with the same
principle used during parliamentary elections.

Thus, which are the ways of turning the voting ballot into a party
mandate? First of all the law reminds that the mandates of the members
of the City Council are distributed among the parties and blocs, which
have crossed the threshold of 7 and 9% respectively. This is the first
point that should be taken into consideration, when speaking about the
calculation of results, member of the Union
of Community Financiers
Mkrtich Gimishyan reminds.

`The law clearly states that the parties should cross the threshold of
7%, while the blocs should get 9%,’ he said. The parties that will fail
to cross the threshold of 7 % will help others. Their votes will be
redistributed among the parties and blocs that have gained enough votes
to be represented at the Yerevan City Council.

After summing up the results of the voting, the Central Electoral
Commission will either declare that the members of the City Council
have been elected or will announce the elections invalid.