Ruling Party Rewrites Election Rules 5 Months Before Election

1. How We Found This

WAYBACK MACHINE PARLIAMENT.AM RECORDS

OWL has been systematically mining Armenia's parliament.am website through the Wayback Machine -- the same OSINT methodology that uncovered the 2.2 million phantom votes in the CEC's own files, the voter data breach, and the Benford's Law violations in official election data.

Parliament.am -- the official website of Armenia's National Assembly -- blocks access through Tor. This means the website is effectively inaccessible to anyone attempting to browse it anonymously, which is how OWL operates. However, the Wayback Machine has been regularly crawling and caching parliament.am pages over the years. By reviewing these cached snapshots, we can see what the parliament has been doing -- even when they try to make it difficult to watch.

In the cached listing pages of draft laws, we found this entry:

This is a real draft law, registered in Armenia's parliament, actively on the legislative agenda. We have the ID, the registration number, the date, the authors, and the status. What we do not yet have is the full text of the amendments -- because parliament.am blocks the kind of anonymous access that would let us retrieve it.

2. What Is the Electoral Code?

CONSTITUTIONAL LAW

The Electoral Code of the Republic of Armenia is not an ordinary law. It is a constitutional law -- a law that derives directly from the Constitution and has a higher legal status than regular legislation. It governs every aspect of how elections are conducted in Armenia:

• Voter registration -- who can vote, how voter lists are compiled, how eligibility is verified
• Vote counting -- how ballots are processed, how results are tabulated, what constitutes a valid vote
• Election observation -- who can observe, what access observers have, what they can report
• Campaign finance -- how campaigns are funded, spending limits, disclosure requirements
• Election administration -- the structure and powers of the Central Election Commission and precinct-level commissions
• Dispute resolution -- how election challenges are filed and adjudicated

Every rule that determines whether an election is free and fair is in this document. Changing the Electoral Code changes the game itself.

3. Who Are the Authors?

ALL RULING PARTY MPS

The draft law has three authors. All three are members of Civil Contract -- the ruling party led by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

Author	Party	Role
Arusyak Julhakyan	Civil Contract	Member of Parliament
Vladimir Vardanyan	Civil Contract	Member of Parliament
Lilit Minasyan	Civil Contract	Member of Parliament

This is not a bipartisan reform effort. This is not an initiative from an independent election commission. This is not a proposal from international election observers who have identified problems. This is the ruling party -- the party that controls the government, the party that controls the parliamentary majority, the party that will be running in the June 7 election -- writing changes to the rules under which it will be judged.

4. The Timing

5 MONTHS BEFORE ELECTION DEMOCRATIC RED FLAG

The draft was submitted on January 22, 2026. Armenia's parliamentary election is scheduled for June 7, 2026. That is approximately five months.

International standards for electoral reform are clear on this point. The Venice Commission -- the Council of Europe's advisory body on constitutional matters -- has established a widely accepted principle:

"The fundamental elements of electoral law, in particular the electoral system proper, membership of electoral commissions and the drawing of constituency boundaries, should not be open to amendment less than one year before an election."
-- Venice Commission, Code of Good Practice in Electoral Matters (2002)

One year. Not five months. The Venice Commission's rationale is straightforward: changing election rules too close to an election advantages the incumbent, because the incumbent understands the new rules better than the opposition, has more resources to adapt, and -- most importantly -- wrote the rules in the first place.

Armenia is a member of the Council of Europe. The Venice Commission's guidelines are not legally binding, but they are the recognized international benchmark for democratic electoral practice. Armenia has repeatedly invoked its Council of Europe membership as evidence of its democratic credentials. Those credentials include adhering to the Venice Commission's recommendations.

5. What OWL Has Already Documented About These Elections

OWL INVESTIGATION SERIES

This draft law does not exist in a vacuum. It comes after OWL published a series of investigations documenting systemic problems in Armenia's electoral infrastructure -- the same infrastructure governed by the Electoral Code that is now being amended.

Here is what we have already found:

• The 98% vs 53% smoking gun -- The CEC's own official file contains two contradictory datasets for the same election. The aggregate sheet claims 98% voter turnout. The per-constituency breakdowns show 53%. The gap represents approximately 2.2 million phantom votes.
• The voter data breach -- Personal data of Armenian voters was exposed through CEC security failures. Names, passport numbers, addresses -- all accessible due to negligent data management.
• The Benford's Law violations -- Statistical analysis of official vote count data revealed patterns consistent with human fabrication of numbers. The digit 0 appeared as the last digit 14.7% of the time -- significantly above the expected 10%.
• Duplicate voters -- 253 people registered more than once on the same voter list. Two people registered three times each.
• Underage voters -- 8 people under 18 were registered to vote, including a 16-year-old.
• Pirated software -- 115 official CEC election files were created on computers running pirated Russian software from known piracy groups.

Every one of these findings relates to the Electoral Code. The voter registration rules that allowed duplicates and underage entries? Electoral Code. The data management standards that led to the breach? Electoral Code. The CEC's structure that enabled a single person to control 591 out of 821 files with no separation of duties? Electoral Code. The vote counting procedures that produced the 2.2 million phantom vote gap? Electoral Code.

6. What Could They Be Changing?

UNANSWERED

We know that Draft Law 80457 amends the Electoral Code. We know who submitted it, when, and that it is on the parliamentary agenda. What we do not know is the specific content of the amendments.

The title -- "Changes and additions to the constitutional law 'Electoral Code of the Republic of Armenia'" -- is deliberately broad. It could cover any of the following:

• Voter registration rules -- Tightening or loosening requirements for who gets on the voter list, how eligibility is verified, how the diaspora votes
• Vote counting procedures -- Changing how ballots are tabulated, what audit trails are required, how recounts work
• Observer access -- Expanding or restricting who can observe elections and what they can do
• Campaign finance -- Changing spending limits, disclosure requirements, funding sources
• CEC composition -- Altering who sits on the election commission, how they are appointed, what powers they have
• Threshold changes -- Modifying the percentage of votes a party needs to enter parliament
• Constituency boundaries -- Redrawing electoral districts (gerrymandering)

Any of these changes, made five months before an election by the ruling party, would be significant. Some -- like threshold changes or constituency boundary redrawing -- would be directly advantageous to the incumbent.

We are not speculating about which of these areas the draft law addresses. We are stating a fact: the ruling party is amending the election rulebook before its own election, and the public cannot easily see what the amendments contain.

7. The International Pattern

AUTHORITARIAN PLAYBOOK

Amending election rules shortly before an election is a well-documented tactic in the authoritarian playbook. It has been used by governments across the world to tilt the playing field while maintaining the appearance of democratic process.

• Hungary (2014) -- Viktor Orban's Fidesz party redrew constituency boundaries and changed campaign finance rules before parliamentary elections, giving the ruling party a structural advantage.
• Turkey (2017) -- The AKP-controlled parliament changed electoral laws to allow unstamped ballots to be counted in the constitutional referendum -- a last-minute rule change that benefited the ruling party's "yes" vote.
• Russia (repeatedly) -- Electoral law amendments before each election cycle, consistently in ways that disadvantage opposition candidates and parties.
• Georgia (2024) -- The ruling Georgian Dream party pushed through electoral changes ahead of the October 2024 election, which international observers subsequently found to be deeply flawed.

The pattern is always the same: the ruling party uses its legislative majority to change the rules of the game it is about to play. The changes are framed as "reforms" or "improvements." The opposition objects. The ruling party passes the changes anyway, because it has the votes. The election is then held under the new rules -- rules the ruling party wrote for itself.

This is what Civil Contract is doing right now.

8. The Transparency Problem

ACCESS BLOCKED

The full text of Draft Law 80457 should be accessible to every Armenian citizen. It is a proposed change to a constitutional law -- the most important category of legislation after the Constitution itself. Public scrutiny is not optional. It is a basic requirement of democratic governance.

Yet the full text is not easily accessible. Parliament.am blocks Tor access, which means anyone trying to read it anonymously cannot. The Wayback Machine captures listing pages but does not always capture the full PDF texts of draft laws. The result: OWL can confirm the draft exists, but we cannot yet read its full content.

This is not solely a problem for OWL. It is a problem for anyone who wants to know what their government is doing to their election rules. A draft law amending the Electoral Code -- five months before an election -- should be front-page news. It should be debated publicly, analyzed by legal experts, and scrutinized by civil society. Instead, it sits in parliament.am behind access restrictions, moving through the legislative process with minimal public attention.

9. What Needs to Happen

DEMOCRATIC ACCOUNTABILITY

The following questions need public answers:

1. What exactly does Draft Law 80457 change? The full text must be published and accessible -- not just on parliament.am behind access restrictions, but made available for public analysis and debate.
2. Why is the Electoral Code being amended 5 months before an election? Civil Contract must explain why these changes could not wait until after June 7.
3. Do the amendments address the documented fraud? OWL has published evidence of phantom votes, duplicate registrations, voter data breaches, and pirated software in the CEC. Do the proposed changes fix any of these problems?
4. Was the opposition consulted? Legitimate electoral reform is bipartisan. Were opposition parties involved in drafting these changes?
5. What does the Venice Commission say? Has the government sought or received an opinion from the Venice Commission on these amendments?

Until these questions are answered, the Armenian public is being asked to participate in an election whose rules were rewritten by one side, without transparency, in violation of international standards on electoral reform timing.

10. Help Us Get the Full Text

OWL found this draft law through the Wayback Machine. We have the metadata -- the ID, the title, the authors, the date, the status. What we do not yet have is the full text of the proposed amendments.

Parliament.am blocks anonymous access. We will continue attempting to recover the full text through archived snapshots. But if you have access to the full text of Draft Law 80457 -- if you can access parliament.am without Tor, if you work in the National Assembly, if you have a copy -- we want to see it.

When we obtain the full text, we will publish a follow-up analysis detailing exactly what Civil Contract is changing and how it affects the June 7 election.