CEDH · CASELAW;JUDGMENTS;CHAMBER;ENG — 13 octobre 2015

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BULGARIA   (Applications nos. 48555/10 and 48377/10)             JUDGMENT (Extracts)       STRASBOURG   13 October 2015   FINAL   13/01/2016     This judgment has become final in the circumstances set out in Article   44 §   2 of the Convention. It may be subject to editorial revision. In the case of Riza and Others v. Bulgaria, The European Court of Human Rights (Fourth Section), sitting as a Chamber composed of:   Guido Raimondi, President,   Päivi Hirvelä,   George Nicolaou,   Ledi Bianku,   Nona Tsotsoria,   Zdravka Kalaydjieva,   Krzysztof Wojtyczek, judges, and Françoise Elens-Passos, Section Registrar, Having deliberated in private on 8 September 2015, Delivers the following judgment, which was adopted on that date: PROCEDURE 1.     The case originated in two applications against the Republic of Bulgaria: the first, no. 48555/10, was lodged by a Bulgarian national, Mr   Rushen Mehmed Riza, and a Bulgarian political party, Dvizhenie za Prava i Svobodi (Movement for Rights and Freedoms – “DPS”), and the second, no.   48377/10, was lodged by 101 other Bulgarian nationals, whose names, dates of birth and places of residence are appended. Those two applications were lodged with the Court on 14 August 2010 under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”). 2.     All the applicants were represented by Ms S. O. Solakova, a lawyer practising in Sofia. The Bulgarian Government (“the Government”) were represented by their Agents, Ms N. Nikola and Ms A. Panova, of the Ministry of Justice. 3.     Mr Riza and the DPS, on the one hand, and the other 101 applicants, on the other, alleged, in particular, that the Bulgarian Constitutional Court’s decision to annul the election results in 23 polling stations set up outside the country during the 2009 Bulgarian general elections had amounted to an unjustified infringement of their right to stand for election and their right to vote, respectively, which rights were safeguarded by Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention. 4.     On 4 April 2011 application no. 48555/10 lodged by Mr Riza and the DPS was communicated to the Government. On 8 July 2014 application no.   48377/10 lodged by 101 Bulgarian nationals was also communicated to the Government. As permitted under Article 29 § 1 of the Convention, it was also decided that the Chamber would adjudicate simultaneously on the admissibility and the merits of the applications. 5.   On 10 February 2015 the Chamber decided to join the two applications as permitted under Rule 42 § 1 of the Rules of Court and to invite the judge elected in respect of Bulgaria , Z. Kalaydjieva, to participate in the subsequent examination of the case pursuant to Rule 26 § 3 of the Rules of Court. THE FACTS I.     THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE CASE A.     General background to the case 6.     The 101 applicants, whose names are appended, are Bulgarian nationals of Turkish origin and/or of Muslim faith who live or have lived in Turkey. They all exercised their right to vote at the 2009 Bulgarian general elections in 17 of the polling stations set up in Turkish territory, the election results in which were subsequently contested by the RZS political party and nullified by the Bulgarian Constitutional Court. 7.     According to the official statistics from the census carried out in Bulgaria in 2011, 588,318 persons stated that they were ethnic Turks, amounting to 8.8% of the persons who answered that question, and 577,139   persons stated that they were of Muslim religion. Since the late 1980s, the members of those communities have been involved in major migrations leading many of them to settle in Turkey. The Court has no official information on the exact number of Bulgarian citizens who are ethnic Turks or Muslims living temporarily or permanently in Turkey. Estimates of that number vary considerably, generally ranging from 300,000 to 500,000   individuals, in all the age brackets. 8.     The DPS was founded in 1990. Its statutes define it as a liberal political party endeavouring to help unite all Bulgarian citizens and to protect the rights and freedoms of minorities in Bulgaria as guaranteed by the Constitution and national legislation, as well as by the international instruments ratified by the Republic of Bulgaria. 9.     The DPS has put up candidates for all general and local elections in Bulgaria since its inception. It has won seats in the national Parliament in all the general elections held since 1990. Between 2001 and 2009 it took part in two successive coalition governments. Several of its leaders and members belong to the Bulgarian Turkish and Muslim minorities. 10.     Mr Riza was born in 1968 and lives in Sofia. A DPS member, he is also one of its Vice-Presidents and a member of the party’s central executive bureau. He is currently a DPS deputy of the National Assembly. 11.     These two applicants submit that most of the Bulgarian citizens currently living in Turkey have voted for the DPS at all the general elections held over the last twenty years. B.     Bulgarian general elections on 5 July 2009 12.     By Decree of 28 April 2009 the Bulgarian President set 5 July 2009 as the date of the elections to the 41 st National Assembly. The electoral law laid down a new hybrid electoral system: 31 deputies were to be elected on a first-past-the-post basis in single-member constituencies, and 209 deputies were to be elected on a proportional basis at national level in 31   multiple-member constituencies. 13. Bulgarian citizens living abroad were entitled to vote in the general elections, but only for parties and coalitions, and their votes were taken into account in the proportional distribution of sears among the different political formations at the national level ... Having obtained the consent of the competent authorities in the countries concerned, the Bulgarian diplomatic representations opened 274 polling stations in 59 countries, 123 of them in Turkey. 14.     On 20 May 2009 the Central Electoral Commission registered the DPS as participating in the general elections. The DPS presented lists of candidates in several single- and multiple-member constituencies. It was also included on the ballot paper designed for voting by Bulgarian citizens living abroad. Mr Riza was included in second position on the list of his party’s candidates for the 8 th multiple-member constituency (Dobrich). 15.     Thirteen of the 101 applicants (see appended list) (nos., 13, 17, 21, 26, 30, 39, 51, 59, 74, 75, 89 and 94) submitted that they had all personally submitted prior declarations of intention to vote to the Bulgarian diplomatic representations in Turkey. The Bulgarian diplomates has asked them to take part in local electoral committees in Istanbul, Bursa, Çerkezköy, Çorlu and İzmir as presidents, secretaries or ordinary members, which they had agreed to do. On 4 July 2009 they had been invited to the offices of the Bulgarian diplomatic and consular representations, where Bulgarian diplomats had informed them about the formalities to be complied with on election day, and in particular how to draw up the electoral rolls. Some of the applicants affirmed that they had only been given one instruction on that subject, to the effect that persons attending the polling station on election day without preregistration should be included on the additional pages of the electoral roll, and that the last name added on election day should be suffixed with a “Z”. 16.     The 13 applicants submitted that their names had not been included on the list at the polling station where they were to function as members of the electoral committee. They had all voted in their respective polling stations by registering on election day and signing opposite their names and forenames. Furthermore, they submitted that they had carefully indicated their choices on their ballot papers, without any other type of indication, and slotted the papers into the ballot box. 17.     The 13 applicants also pointed out that there had been no particular problems on election day. Their respective electoral committees had been made up of Bulgarian nationals living in their respective towns and representatives of the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Some of the polling stations had been visited by the Bulgarian Ambassador and Consul General, and others had been reported on by Bulgarian public television and radio teams, and no irregularities had been noted. At the close of polling on election day the local committees had counted the votes, filled in the requisite report forms and submitted the electoral documents to the Bulgarian diplomatic representatives. 18.     The other 88 applicants submitted that at the material time they had been living in Turkey. Some of them had sent prior statements of intention to vote to the Bulgarian diplomatic representations, but they had never been informed in return of which polling stations to vote in. On election day all the applicants in question had attended the nearest polling stations in their respective towns. Their names had been handwritten into the electoral rolls, and after voting they signed opposite their names. 19.     According to information available on the Central Electoral Commission website ( http://pi2009.cik.bg ), following the 5 July 2009 elections, six political parties and coalitions garnered more than the minimum 4% of votes cast and were included in the process of proportional distribution of seats in the National Assembly: the GERB party, the Coalition for Bulgaria, the DPS, Ataka, the Blue Coalition and the RZS party. 20.     The DPS obtained a total of 610,521 votes, or 14.45% of the valid votes, which made it the country’s third political party. It garnered 61.18% of the out-of-country voting, that is to say 93,926 votes, 88,238 of which were cast in polling stations in Turkish territory. It came out well ahead in the 17 polling stations – in Istanbul, Bursa, Çerkezköy, Çorlu and İzmir – in which the 101 applicants had voted. By decision of 7 July 2009 the Central Electoral Commission assigned the DPS 33 parliamentary seats under the proportional representation system, together with a further five seats won in the first-past-the-post constituencies. 21.     Following the apportionment of seats won by the DPS at the national level in the 31 multiple-member constituencies, the party won only one seat in the 8 th constituency. However, another political formation, the Blue Coalition, having appealed to the Constitutional Court and the votes cast in a polling station in the 19 th constituency having been recounted, the Central Electoral Commission conducted a reassignment of the seats won at the national level among the 31 multiple-member constituencies. This gave the DPS a second seat in the 8 th constituency, where Mr Riza was in second place on his list of candidates, and removed one of the two seats initially won in the 19 th multiple-member constituency. On 12   October 2009 Mr Riza was declared elected to the National Assembly. He was sworn in as a deputy and became a member of his party’s parliamentary group. On 20 January 2010 he was elected member of the Parliamentary Commission on Ethics and the Fight against Corruption and Conflicts of Interest. C.     Procedure for contesting election results before the Constitutional Court 1.     The appeal lodged by the RZS party 22.     On 21 July 2009 the President and three other members of the RZS ( Red, Zakonnost, Spravedlivost – “Order, Law and Justice”), a right-wing conservative party, requested the Attorney General to lodge with the Constitutional Court the appeal provided for in section 112 of the Electoral Law in order to annul the election of seven DPS deputes on the grounds of several irregularities which had occurred in the 123 polling stations operating in Turkish territory. The four appellants complained of several breaches of electoral legislation in connection with the setting up of the said polling stations and their handling of the voting: they claimed that the rule requiring a polling station to be opened for every one hundred prior statements of intention to vote had been flouted in Turkish territory; some electors had exercised their voting rights once in Bulgarian national territory and again in a polling station in Turkish territory; incorrect information had been included in the reports drawn up by the electoral committees concerning the number of voters in the polling stations in question; 23 of them had allegedly dealt with over 1,000 voters, which would have been a practical impossibility in view of the opening hours of the polling station and the time required to complete the requisite formalities for each voter, and the electoral committees attached to those polling stations had, in certain cases, reportedly allowed persons into the voting booths without valid Bulgarian identity papers. The appellants invited the Constitutional Court to verify the authenticity of the prior voting requests issued in Turkish territory, to check the electoral rolls drawn up in the region of Bulgaria where the individuals wishing to vote in Turkey had their permanent addresses, and to declare null and void the records drawn up by the electoral committees responsible for the polling stations opened in Turkish territory. According to the appellants, the large number of irregularities committed in the voting procedure in the 123 polling stations in question necessitated the annulment of the votes cast in them, which annulment would have changed the election results and led to the ousting of seven DPS deputies from their seats. 23.     On 22 July 2009 the Attorney General transmitted the request submitted by the President and three other members of the RZS party to the Constitutional Court. 2.     The initial phase of the proceedings before the Constitutional Court 24.     On 11 August 2009 the Constitutional Court declared the appeal admissible and designated as parties to proceedings the National Assembly, the Council of Ministers, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Central Electoral Commission, the National Department responsible for Citizens’ Civil Status Data and two non-governmental organisations. It sent copies of the request and the relevant documents to the parties to proceedings and gave them a deadline of twenty days to submit their observations on the merits of the case. That court asked the National Department responsible for Citizens’ Civil Status Data to ascertain how many voters had voted in the national territory and then again in Turkish territory, and invited it to submit certified copies of the lists of persons having voted and the reports on voting drawn up by the polling stations in Turkish territory. The President of the Constitutional Court, R.Y., and Judge B.P. signed the admissibility decision, while issuing a separate opinion. They argued that the Attorney General should have submitted a reasoned request to the Constitutional Court rather than merely transmitting the request for annulment lodged by the RZS political party. 3.     Initial written observations by the DPS parliamentary group 25.     On 18 September 2009 the DPS parliamentary group of the National Assembly presented its written observations on the case. It first of all disputed the admissibility of the appeal lodged by the four appellants, arguing that the Attorney General had failed to conduct a prior assessment of the merits of the said request, merely transmitting it to the Constitutional   Court, that the appeal had been lodged belatedly, after the deputies in question had been sworn in, and that the seven DPS deputies mentioned in the request had been designated randomly since the out-of-country votes had been used solely to apportion the seats among the various parties at the national level and not for the benefit of any given list of candidates. Secondly, the DPS parliamentary group submitted that the request had been ill-founded for the following reasons: the legal conditions for setting up the 123 polling stations in question had been fulfilled; there had been very few cases of double voting, and voting secrecy precluded determining for which party exactly those persons had voted; the number of persons included on the additional electoral rolls on election day had been higher than that of preregistered voters because the number of persons wishing to exercise their voting rights had far exceeded the number of voters having previously declared their intention to vote outside the country; and in several of the out-of-country polling stations the number of persons voting had exceeded one thousand, and that had not been the case only in the polling stations in Turkey. 4.     Expert reports commissioned by the Constitutional Court 26.     On 6 October 2009, at the request of the RZS party, the Constitutional Court ordered a threefold expert assessment to provide the answers to the following questions: (i)   how many prior statements of intention to vote were submitted for the territory of Turkey, from which towns were they sent, and did their number correspond to the number of polling stations set up? (ii)   were the identity papers of electors voting in the 123 polling stations valid? (iii)   did the numbers of electors voting recorded in the minutes drawn up on election day correspond to the total number of preregistered electors and persons registered on the rolls on election day, and were there any polling stations in which none of the preregistered persons exercised their right to vote? (iv) what was the maximum number of persons who could vote in a polling station over election day? The three experts were given leave to consult all the documents on elections in Turkish territory which the diplomatic service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had submitted to the Central Electoral Commission. 27.     The expert report was submitted to the Constitutional Court some time later. It indicated that there had been a total of 27,235 prior declarations of intention to vote in respect of the territory of Turkey: 5,127 of those declarations had been received at the Bulgarian Embassy in Ankara, 15,556 at the Consulate General in Istanbul and 6,552 at the Consulate General in Edirne. The Bulgarian diplomatic services had opened 28 polling stations in the Ankara region, 72 in the Istanbul region and 23 in the Edirne region. The experts had noted that some polling stations had been opened without the threshold of 100   declarations of intention to vote having been reached. 28.     The experts were unable to answer the second question, on the validity of the Bulgarian identity papers of those voting in Turkey. They pointed out that it would have been very time-consuming to carry out the necessary verifications and would have required access to the population database administered by the Ministry of the Interior. Furthermore, in several cases the local electoral committees had merely mentioned the type of document presented, i.e. an identity card or passport, without recording the document number. 29.     As regards the third question, the experts replied that there had been some very slight differences – between one and five persons – between the numbers of persons voting recorded in the polling station minutes and the numbers of voters included in the electoral rolls. According to the experts, that might have been due to inadvertent omissions. Moreover, they observed that the additional electoral lists in 116 polling stations, which had been drawn up on election day and contained data on the persons who had turned out without having been preregistered, had not been signed by the chair or secretary of the local electoral committee. The experts noted that the personal data on electors contained in those lists had been handwritten, apparently unhurriedly, and those entries would have taken a considerable length of time to write. Furthermore, in some of the polling stations none of the preregistered persons had turned out to vote. In some other polling stations there had been no minutes on file, or else the first page of the minutes had been missing. 30.     As regards the fourth question put by the Constitutional Court, the experts concluded, from a reconstitution of the requisite formalities in dealing with voters and their ballot papers, that the minimum time required for voting would have been about fifty seconds. Having regard to the total duration of election day, that is to say thirteen hours, the experts estimated that a polling station could deal with a maximum of 936 voters. The maximum number of persons voting as thus calculated had been exceeded in 30 of the polling stations operating in Turkey. 31.     The National Department responsible for Citizens’ Civil Status Data presented the Constitutional Court with the results of its inquiry into cases of double voting. The department pointed out that 174 persons had voted several times and that 79 cases of double voting had been noted in Turkey. 32.     On 27 January 2010 the Constitutional Court decided to ask the three experts to examine an additional point: it asked them to recalculate the election results after deducting all the votes cast in 23 polling stations and some of those cast in another polling station, all located in Turkish territory. The court’s request covered: (i) all the votes cast in 18   polling stations where none of the preregistered voters had voted and where the additional lists of those voting had not been signed by the members of the local electoral committees and therefore lacked the probative value of official documents; (ii) all the votes cast in a polling station in which the minutes on voting were missing; (iii)     all the votes cast in two other polling stations where the first page of the minutes was missing; (iv)     all the votes cast in a polling station where the list of preregistered voters was missing; (v)     86 votes cast for the DPS by persons included in the unsigned additional list at another polling station where that party had garnered all the votes and where 124 preregistered persons had voted; (vi)     all the votes cast in another polling station where the list of preregistered voters had not been put on file and where the additional electoral list had not been signed by the members of the local electoral committee. 33.     On 2 February 2010 the experts submitted their supplementary conclusions to the Constitutional Court. In the introductory section of the report they pointed out that they had been mandated to deduct from the outcome of the election the votes cast in polling stations where: (i)   none of the preregistered voters had voted and where the additional lists of those voting had not been signed by the members of the local electoral committees; (ii)   the minutes were not put on file; (iii)   the first page of the minutes was missing. The report presented estimates of the votes cast in 23 polling stations: (i) in 18 of those stations, none of the preregistered voters had voted and the additional list of voters had not been signed; (ii)   in the case of another polling station, no minutes had been put on file and the additional list of voters had not been signed; (iii)   for three other stations, the first page of the minutes was missing and the additional list of voters had not been signed; (iv)   in another polling station, the first page of the minutes had not mentioned the number of persons having voted and none of the preregistered voters had voted. The experts considered that a total of 18,351 votes should be deducted from the election results, 18,140 of which had been case for the DPS. The Central Electoral Commission conducted the provisional reassignment of seats among the political parties on the basis of the expert report. 5.     Other written observations and requests submitted to the Constitutional Court 34.     On 9 February 2010 the parliamentary group of the DPS submitted supplementary observations challenging the Constitutional Court’s choice of criteria for excluding the votes cast in the aforementioned polling stations from the vote count. The DPS deputies pointed out that the outcome of the voting had been based on the data set out in the polling station minutes, and not on the electoral rolls. They added that electoral legislation did not require the chairs and secretaries of out-of-country local electoral committees to sign below the additional lists of voters drawn up on election day. At all events, in the deputies’ opinion, the shortcomings of members of the electoral administration could not lead to the annulment of electors’ votes. 35.     On 15 February 2010 the Central Electoral Commission presented its findings to the Constitutional Court. It pointed out that according to mathematical projections, the annulment of the votes cast in the 23   polling stations mentioned in the experts’ supplementary conclusions would deprive the DPS of one seat which would be assigned to the GERB political party and that in the 8 th multiple-member constituency the DPS candidate concluded in second place on the party’s list, Mr Riza, would lose his parliamentary seat. 36.     The Central Electoral Commission presented the Constitutional Court with observations made by five of its twenty-five members on the merits of the case. Those five members voiced the opinion that the arguments put forward by the appellants and the experts’ conclusions could not be used to justify annulling the votes cast in the polling stations in question. They explained in particular that the lists of persons voting in the out-of-country polling stations had been drawn up by the Bulgarian diplomatic representatives accredited on the basis of the prior declarations of intention to vote which they had received. They nevertheless stated that no prior information had been given on the distribution of the voters in question around the various polling stations, as they could attend any polling station or choose not to vote at all, which in their view explained why in some stations none of the voters on the main list had voted. The members of the Electoral Commission considered that that should not lead to the invalidation of the ballots of other electors who had voted in the same polling station. They pointed out that under domestic legislation the election documents had to be packaged and sealed by the local electoral committees and then sent to the Central Electoral Commission. However, when the election documents had arrived from Turkey, it had been noted that the packages containing the documents had already been opened and then re-sealed by the diplomatic services of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. At all events, the absence, attributable to the Bulgarian diplomatic services or the local electoral committees, of election documents from out-of-county polling stations could not have justified annulling votes cast in those stations, given that the election results from outside the country had been based on data transmitted via diplomatic telegrams to the Central Electoral Commission. Finally, the members of the Electoral Commission, referring to domestic legislation, submitted that the fact that a member of the Electoral Commission had not signed minutes of voting or the accompanying documents did not invalidate them and did not constitute grounds for annulling the votes cast in the station in question. They considered that the recalculation of the election results was based on arguments which had not been mentioned in the request to the Constitutional Court. 37.     On 15 February 2010 the DPS and six of its deputies applied to the Constitutional Court for leave to join the proceedings in question as a party. In that application the DPS stated that it fully endorsed the observations submitted by its parliamentary group on 18 September 2009 and 9 February 2010. On 16 February 2010 Mr Riza requested leave to join the proceedings as a party. In order to demonstrate his interest in taking part in the proceedings he referred explicitly to the additional expert report ordered by the Constitutional Court and the reapportionment of seats effected by the Central Electoral Commission on the basis of the experts’ findings. All those requests remained unanswered. 6.     16 February 2010 judgment of the Constitutional Court 38.     On 16 February 2010 the Constitutional Court, sitting in private session, adopted its decision in the case in question. It delivered its judgment on the same day. 39.     The Constitutional Court dismissed the pleas of inadmissibility put forward by the DPS parliamentary group in its observations of 18   September 2009 (see paragraph 25 above). It considered, first of all, that the procedure for applying to the court had been respected. Secondly, it observed that the case concerned the contestation of election results rather than the eligibility of an individual candidate, which enabled it to assess the case even though the deputies in question had been sworn in and were already in office. It joined to the merits of the case the third plea of inadmissibility concerning the lack of a direct link between the out-of-country votes and the election of the seven DPS deputies named in the initial request. Judges R.N. and B.P. set out separate opinions on the admissibility of the request for annulment of the election results. They considered that the Attorney General had merely transmitted the request submitted by the RZS party instead of himself lodging a reasoned application for the annulment of the elections. 40.     Considering that it should begin by clarifying the scope of the case, the Constitutional Court pointed out that it had been invited to find unlawful the election of a number of DPS deputies owing to several alleged irregularities in the polling stations operating in Turkish territory. Having regard to the specific mode of functioning of the Bulgarian electoral system, in which votes cast by Bulgarian citizens living abroad were taken into account solely for the proportional distribution of seats among political parties at the national level, it was impossible to determine in advance which deputies would be affected by the invalidation of some or all of the votes cast in Turkish territory. Thus, in the framework of that case, the Constitutional Court considered that it had been called upon to determine whether there had been any serious irregularities in the voting procedure in the 123 polling stations in Turkey. It held that a finding of such irregularities could lead to a change in the election results, a fresh apportionment of seats among the political parties and the annulment of the seats of deputies who had not been explicitly targeted by the initial application lodged by the leader and a number of candidates of the RZS party in the general elections. 41.     The Constitutional Court rejected all the arguments put forward in the initial statement of claim. It first of all noted that section 41 (8) (3) of the Electoral Law gave Bulgarian diplomatic representatives outside the country carte blanche to open as many polling stations as they considered necessary for the proper conduct of the elections. 42.     Secondly, it considered that the question whether a given voter had voted without a valid Bulgarian identity card was immaterial to the outcome of the proceedings, since voting secrecy ruled out ascertaining which party the person had voted for. 43.     The Constitutional Court stated that the experts had noted that in some polling stations none of those on the main electoral roll had voted, while in other stations only a few of those on the roll had voted. It pointed out that according to the experts the names added on election day had been written clearly and apparently unhurriedly, which would seem rather unlikely given the large number of such additions and the pressure under which the members of the electoral committees would have been working on election day. However, the Constitutional Court considered that such considerations were mere suspicions which had not categorically demonstrated that the results of voting in those polling stations had been manipulated. 44.     The Constitutional Court also noted that the experts had reached the conclusion that the maximum number of persons who could vote in one polling station was 936. However, it considered that in the absence of precise information on the alleged irregularities in the voting procedure in the polling stations with more than 1,000 persons voting, that finding did not provide grounds for invalidating the election results. At all event voting secrecy precluded determining for whom the persons registered after number 936 on the list of voters had cast their vote. 45.     For those reasons the Constitutional Court dismissed the application for the annulment of the seats of the seven deputies explicitly covered by the initial request submitted by the leader and candidates of the RZS party. 46.     However, it decided to deduct from the results obtained by each of the political parties respectively all the votes cast in 23   polling stations in Turkey, that is to say a total of 18,358 votes, 18,140 of which had been cast for the DPS. It pointed out that in those polling stations none of the voters preregistered on the main electoral rolls had voted, or else the first page of the minutes of the voting, certifying that the preregistered persons had voted, was missing. The court pointed out that in the 23 polling stations in question the additional lists of voters drawn up on election day did not bear the signatures of the chairs and secretaries of the local electoral committees, which deprived them of the probative value of official documents. The Constitutional Court accordingly considered that they could not be used in evidence to demonstrate that the registered persons had voted. That approach had allegedly also enabled it to determine how many votes had been deducted from the election results of each party or coalition and to reallocate the deputies’ seats in the National Assembly. 47.     The Constitutional Court rejected the additional objections raised by the DPS parliamentary group on 9 February 2010 (see paragraph   34 above). It considered that the irregularities noted in the electoral rolls in the various polling stations had also affected the legitimacy of the minutes drawn up by the electoral committee on completion of the voting because they contained data on the exact number of persons having voted in the polling station in question and the election results had been determined on the basis of the minutes. Even though domestic legislation did not explicitly require the members of the out-of-country local electoral committees to sign additional electoral lists, the module additional electoral list approved by the President of the Republic pursuant to the Electoral Law provided for such signatures. The Constitutional Court therefore took the view that such signature was a legal condition for the validity of such official documents. At all events, the signature was one of the fundamental and obvious components of any official document. The lack of those signatures on the additional voter lists drawn up in the 23 polling stations thus deprived them of their official probative value in respect of the fact that the registered persons had actually cast their votes. 48.     The Constitutional Court declared that the votes in question had been valid under domestic legislation but that they had been deducted from the election results owing to the irregularity of the voter lists and the voting minutes. It considered that the seats in the National Assembly had to be reallocated. For those reasons, and having taken into account the prior calculations submitted by the Central Electoral Commission, the Constitutional Court annulled the parliamentary seats of three deputies, including Mr Riza. It ordered the Central Electoral Commission to reapportion the seats in the National Assembly by deducting from the election results the 18,358 votes cast in the 23 polling stations in question. 49.     By decision of 19 February 2010, pursuant to the judgment of the Constitutional Court, the Central Electoral Commission declared three other candidates elected. Consequently to that redistribution of seats, the DPS was the only party to have lost a parliamentary seat and the GERB party, which had won the general elections, obtained an additional seat. D.     Appeals lodged by Mr Riza and the DPS 50.     On 4 March 2010 the DPS and three of its deputies in the National Assembly in turn lodged the appeal provided for in section 112 of the Electoral Law and contested the lawfulness of the election of the three deputies which the Central Electoral Commission had declared elected by decision of 19   February 2010. Mr Riza lodged the same appeal in his own name. 51.     On 31 March and 27 April 2010 the Constitutional Court declared the two appeals inadmissible on the grounds that the dispute in issue had already been the subject of proceedings before it, leading to its judgment of 16 February 2010. E.     Other relevant circumstances 52.     The 41 st National Assembly constituted following the general elections of 5 July 2009 sat until 15 March 2013, when it was dissolved by Presidential Decree. 53.     The elections to the 42 nd National Assembly were held on 12 May 2013. At those elections the DPS obtained 400,460 votes, that is to say 11.31% of the validly cast votes. It obtained 51,784 votes in Turkish territory. It sent 36 deputies to the National Assembly, where it was the third biggest parliamentary group. Mr Riza was elected deputy of the 8 th multiple-member   constituency, where he headed his party’s list. 54.     The lawfulness of those general elections, particularly as regards the polling stations opened in Turkish territory, was disputed before the Constitutional Court by a group of 48 deputies from the GERB party. The deputies requested the annulment of the elections in the 86 polling stations operating in Turkey owing to several alleged irregularities in the voting procedures: they submitted that the polling stations had been set up on the basis of forged prior declarations of intention to vote; they had opened despite their electoral committees lacking the minimum number of members; unidentified persons had canvassed the areas inhabited by Bulgarian citizens in Turkey, had obtained Bulgarian identity papers from various electors and had returned them to their owners the day before the elections telling them that they had voted; several voters had not shown any valid   Bulgarian identity papers; the number of persons voting in some of the polling stations had exceeded, which was unrealistic in view of the time required to complete the formalities linked to the voting procedure; there had been several cases of double voting; the lists of electors registered on election day had not been properly drawn up and had not been signed by the chair and the other members of the electoral committee. The request referred explicitly to the reasoning of the judgment delivered by the Constitutional Court on 16 February 2010. 55.     By judgment of 28 November 2013 the Constitutional Court dismissed the appeal lodged by the 48 GERB deputies. It considered and rejected, on the basis of the evidence gathered, all the allegations of breaches of electoral legislation advanced by the appellants. It noted, inter alia , that the relevant members of all the electoral committees set up in Turkish territory had signed at the bottom of the lists of voters added on election day, which gave those documents the probative value of official documents. 56.     During the 42 nd legislature the DPS took part in a coalition government which resigned in July 2014. Following those events the 42 nd National Assembly was dissolved on 6 August 2014 by Presidential Decree. 57.     The elections to the 43 rd National Assembly were held on 5   October 2014. The DPS obtained 487,134 votes, that is to say 14.84% of all valid votes cast, and sent 38 deputies to Parliament. No admissible appeal was lodged before the Constitutional Court against those election results. The DPS is currently the third biggest political party in the country and the second biggest opposition party. 58.     Mr Riza was elected as deputy in the 8 th constituency, where he headed the DPS list. ... III.     RELEVANT WORK OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION FOR DEMOCRACY THROUGH LAW 91.     At its 51 st and 52 nd sessions on 5 and 6 July and 18 and 19 October 2002, the Commission European for Democracy through Law (the Venice Commission) adopted its guidelines in electoral matters and an explanatory report on those guidelines. These two documents together constitute the Venice Commission’s Code of Good Conduct in Electoral Matters, which was approved by the Parliamentary Assemblée and the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe in 2003. 92.     The relevant parts of the Code read as follows: Guidelines “2.   Equal suffrage Equal suffrage entails: ... equal voting rights ...; ... equal voting power ...; equal opportunities ... 3.3. An effective system of appeal a. The appeal body in electoral matters should be either an electoral commission or a court. For elections to Parliament, an appeal to Parliament may be provided for in first instance. In any case, final appeal to a court must be possible. b. The procedure must be simple and devoid of formalism, in particular concerning the admissibility of appeals. c. The appeal procedure and, in particular, the powers and responsibilities of the various bodies should be clearly regulated by law, so as to avoid conflicts of jurisdiction (whether positive or negative). Neither the appellants nor the authorities should be able to choose the appeal body. d. The appeal body must have authority in particular over such matters as the right to vote – including electoral registers – and eligibility, the validity of candidatures, proper observance of election campaign rules and the outcome of the elections. e. The appeal body must have authority to annul elections where irregularities may have affected the outcome. It must be possible to annul the entire election or merely the results for one constituency or one polling station. In the event of annulment, a new election must be called in the area concerned. f. All candidates and all voters registered in the constituency concerned must be entitled to appeal. A reasonable quorum may be imposed for appeals by voters on the results of elections. g. Time-limits for lodging and deciding appeals must be short (three to five days for each at first instance). h. The applicant’s right to a hearing involving both parties must be protected. i. Where the appeal body is a higher electoral commission, it must be able ex officio to rectify or set aside decisions taken by lower electoral commissions.” Explanatory report “2. Equal suffrage 10. Equality in electoral matters comprises a variety of aspects. Some concern equality of suffrage, a value shared by the whole continent, while others go beyond this concept and cannot be deemed to reflect any common standard. The principles to be respected in all cases are numerical vote equality, equality in terms of electoral strength and equality of chances. On the other hand, equality of outcome achieved, for instance, by means of proportional representation of the parties or the sexes, cannot be imposed. ... 3.3. An effective system of appeal 92. If the electoral law provisions are to be more than just words on a page, failure to comply with the electoral law must be open to challenge before an appeal body. This applies in particular to the election results: individual citizens may challenge them on the grounds of irregularities in the voting procedures. It also applies to decisions taken before the elections, especially in connection with the right to vote, electoral registers and standing for election, the validity of candidatures, compliance with the rules governing the electoral campaign and access to the media or to party funding. 93. There are two possible solutions: - appeals may be heard by the ordinary courts, a special court or the constitutional court; - appeals may be heard by an electoral commission. There is much to be said for this latter system in that the commissions are highly specialised whereas the courts tend to be less experienced wit