ANNAGI HAJIBEYLI v. AZERBAIJAN JUDGMENT 9 legitimate aim of reducing the number of fringe candidates and avoiding “overcrowded” lists of registered candidates in order to prevent confusion among the electorate. 44. The Government argued that the domestic electoral law contained sufficient safeguards preventing the adoption of arbitrary decisions to refuse registration. Firstly, signature sheets were examined by working groups specially created by electoral commissions in accordance with Article 59.2 of the Electoral Code. These working groups consisted of experts and “specialists” of the relevant State authorities, most of whom were employees of the Centre of Forensic Science of the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of the Interior, the State Register of Immovable Property and other agencies. Before taking up their duties as working group members, they had been trained by experts with the “appropriate knowledge and experience in the relevant field”. Secondly, the electoral law required that a working group meeting had to be open to the public, that the nominated candidate be given the opportunity to attend if he wished to do so, and that the working group’s documents on the results of examination of signature sheets be made available to the nominated candidate twenty-four hours before the electoral commission met to decide whether to register the candidate. Thirdly, the law required the working group to indicate the basis for invalidating signatures. Fourthly, the nominated candidate had a right to lodge appeals with the CEC and courts against a decision refusing the registration. All of the above combined to form a sufficient body of safeguards preventing arbitrary refusals to register candidates. 45. In the present case, both the ConEC and CEC working groups found that a large number of signatures collected in support of the applicant were invalid. Therefore, the decision to refuse registration was justified, owing to the applicant’s failure to produce at least 450 valid signatures in his support. In his appeal to the Baku Court of Appeal, where he challenged the findings of the electoral commissions’ working groups, the applicant failed to request the court to appoint an expert examination by a graphologist. Both the Baku Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court reached a correct conclusion that there were no reasons to doubt the findings of the electoral commissions’ working groups. 46. The applicant submitted that, contrary to the requirements of Article 59.3 of the Electoral Code, he had not been informed about the time of the ConEC working group meeting in advance and had not been given the opportunity to attend the meeting, thus depriving him of the opportunity to provide necessary explanations to working group members in order to dispel any doubts over authenticity of the disputed signatures. 47. Furthermore, contrary to the requirements of Article 59.13 of the Electoral Code, the working group documents on the results of examination of signature sheets had not been made available to him prior to the ConEC meeting dealing with his registration request. He was eventually and