10 HAJILI v. AZERBAIJAN JUDGMENT 38. As to the applicant’s argument that the CEC had failed to order a recount, the Government argued that Article 108.4 of the Electoral Code did not require the CEC to recount the votes in all cases, but simply vested it with the discretion to decide whether a recount of votes should be ordered in each particular case. The Government further argued that a recount of votes had not been possible in the present case, because in accordance with Article 106.3.6 of the Electoral Code in force at the material time (this provision was subsequently repealed in 2008), ballots which were not in envelopes were considered invalid. As all the ballots submitted to the CEC had already been pulled out of their envelopes during the original count in the relevant polling stations and had not been put back into them, the recount of these ballots was impossible. 39. The Government argued that the established incidents of tampering with official records of election results had made it impossible for the CEC to determine the true will of the voters on the basis of those records. Such interference with the procedure of the vote-count documentation interfered with the free expression of the opinion of the people and, therefore, the CEC had correctly invalidated the election results in the applicant’s constituency, as it was guided by the legitimate aim of ensuring that only the candidates elected in accordance with the will expressed by voters represented those voters in parliament. 40. The applicant submitted that he had won the election convincingly by a considerable margin of votes. The applicant claimed that, according to the relevant PEC results records which he had been able to obtain, he had received the highest amount of votes in the constituency. Moreover, he noted that the “provisional” election results published by the media immediately after the elections had indicated him as the winner in his constituency. 41. The applicant argued that the CEC decision had lacked any relevant reasons and that he, as a candidate and affected party, had been deprived of the opportunity to exercise his basic procedural rights during the CEC proceedings. The examination by the domestic courts of his appeals against the CEC decision had been ineffective. 42. The applicant further noted that all the alleged impermissible changes made to the official records of the election results had been made in favour of his opponents, and not in his favour. Despite this, the CEC had failed to comply with Article 114.5 of the Electoral Code, which did not allow invalidation of election results if it was established that any irregularities discovered during the election process had been made to assist the candidates who had not ultimately been elected, and not the winning candidate. In any event, the majority of the alleged unlawful alterations were of a “technical nature” which did not affect the figures on the total number of votes cast, and therefore could not impede the determination of the true will of the voters.