Election Investigations Guidebook polling stations had been falsified in favor of his opponent. After the CEC and the Court of Appeal rejected his appeal, the European Court determined that “the decisions of the electoral commissions and domestic courts lacked any factual basis.”128 As “they refused to examine any primary evidence,” the European Court concluded, the domestic arbiters’ decisions undermined the integrity and effectiveness of the process and violated the applicant’s rights under the European Convention.129 In a similar case, Namat Aliyev v. Azerbaijan, the applicant submitted a complaint alleging a number of electoral violations, such as voter intimidation, multiple voting, and ballot-box stuffing. He offered extensive evidence in support of his complaint, including more than 30 affidavits from election observers, audio tapes, and other documents. Nevertheless, the Constituency Electoral Commission, the CEC, and the Court of Appeal all dismissed the applicant’s complaint as unsubstantiated. Although the domestic authorities “should have reacted by taking reasonable steps to investigate the alleged irregularities,” the European Court concluded, in ruling for the applicant, that “there is no indication that any detailed assessment of the substance of the applicant’s allegations was attempted or that any genuine effort was made to determine the validity of his claims.”130 In the Namat Aliyev case, the European Court also emphasized that the need for a timely resolution of electoral disputes does not outweigh the responsibility to undertake a thorough review of the evidence: The Court acknowledges that, owing to the complexity of the electoral process and associated time-restraints necessitating streamlining of various election-related procedures, the relevant domestic authorities may be required to examine election-related appeals within comparatively short time limits in order to avoid retarding the electoral process....Nevertheless,…it must be ensured that a genuine effort is made to address the substance of arguable indi- 128 Hajili v. Azerbaijan, App. No. 6984/06 Eur. Ct. H.R. 31 (2012); accord Kerimova v. Azerbaijan, App. No. 20799/06 Eur. Ct. H.R. 31 (2010) (concluding, in an analogous case with a nearly identical fact pattern, that “the decisions of the electoral commission and domestic courts lacked any factual basis”). 129 Hajili v. Azerbaijan, App. No. 6984/06 Eur. Ct. H.R. 56, 57 (2012); accord Kerimova v. Azerbaijan, App. No. 20799/06 Eur. Ct. H.R. 31, ¶ 52 (2010) (similarly concluding that the domestic courts “refused to examine any primary evidence”). 130 Namat Aliyev v. Azerbaijan, App. No. 18705/06, 2010 Eur. Ct. H.R. 88, 83 (2010), http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/sites/‌eng/pages/‌search‌.‌aspx?i‌=001-98187. 60