10 ANNAGI HAJIBEYLI v. AZERBAIJAN JUDGMENT belatedly given copies of only some of those documents. Therefore, he was also deprived of the opportunity to correct any shortcomings found by the working group experts in the signature sheets. 48. Most importantly, in the applicant’s view, the decisions of the electoral commissions on invalidation of signatures were substantively incorrect, unsubstantiated or arbitrary, for various reasons. Some of the working groups’ factual findings were wrong and could be easily rebutted by simply contacting the voter in question and confirming the authenticity of his or her signature. In particular, it was not clear how the commissions and their experts concluded that a number of signatures (201 according to the ConEC, and 233 according to the CEC) had been falsified. There were no specialised handwriting experts among the working-group members and, therefore, their findings that large numbers of signatures were inauthentic were highly subjective and arbitrary. However, the electoral commissions relied on the working-group expert opinions without conducting any further investigation to conclusively establish the authenticity of the impugned signatures. Moreover, a number of signatures were declared invalid on the basis of easily rectifiable errors, without informing the applicant in advance and giving him an opportunity to rectify those errors, as required by the Electoral Code. The invalidation by the ConEC of 33 signatures on “other grounds”, without explaining what those grounds were, was unlawful because the Electoral Code provided for an exhaustive list of grounds for invalidation. 49. The applicant further noted that in his appeal to the CEC he had tried to prove the authenticity of a number of signatures by submitting statements by over 400 voters confirming the authenticity of their signatures. Had this information been taken into account and the authenticity of the signatures confirmed, the total number of valid signatures would have exceeded the statutory threshold of 450 signatures. However, the CEC ignored those documents without giving any reasons. 2. The Court’s assessment 50. The Court refers to the summaries of its case-law made in the Tahirov judgment (cited above, §§ 53-57), which are equally pertinent to the present case. 51. For the purposes of the present complaint, the Court is prepared to accept the Government’s submission that the requirement for collecting 450 supporting signatures for nomination as a candidate pursued a legitimate aim of reducing the number of fringe candidates. 52. It remains to be seen whether, in the present case, the procedure for monitoring compliance with this eligibility condition was conducted in a manner affording sufficient safeguards against an arbitrary decision. 53. Having regard to the material in the case file and the parties’ submissions, the Court notes that the issues raised by the present complaint