CDL-AD(2020)025 - 46 - authenticity of their signatures. The CEC conducted another examination of the signatures by members of its own working group. The applicant was not invited to participate in this process either. They concluded that 178 out of 600 signatures submitted by him were invalid and that the remaining 422 valid signatures was below the minimum required by law. The CEC therefore dismissed the applicant’s complaint and upheld the decision of the constituency election commission. Both the Baku Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court dismissed the applicant’s appeal as unsubstantiated, without examining his arguments in detail. The Court observed that none of the procedural guarantees against the arbitrariness provided for by the Electoral Code – such as the nominee’s right to be present during the examination of signature sheets or to receive the examination report 24 hours before the relevant electoral commission’s meeting – had been respected. The applicant had been deprived of the opportunity to challenge the findings of the working groups throughout the process. Furthermore, neither the CEC nor the domestic courts had addressed any of the well-founded arguments put forward by the applicant or provided proper reasoning in their judgments. The Court therefore found a violation of Article 3 of Protocol No. 1. (c) Legal certainty In addition to the requirement of procedural fairness, the election dispute resolution procedures must be characterised by legal certainty.198 Specific case: In The Russian Conservative Party of Entrepreneurs and Others v. Russia (nos. 55066/00 and 55638/00, 11 January 2007) the applicant party alleged, in particular, a violation of its right to stand for election. The applicant party nominated 151 candidates for the State Duma elections and the CEC confirmed receipt of the party’s list and that it had paid its electoral deposit. Subsequently the CEC, however, refused registration of the applicant party's list of candidates, having found that certain people on the list had provided incorrect information about their income and property. As a result, all candidates on the list were disqualified. Disagreeing with the CEC’s interpretation, the applicant party successfully challenged its decision before the domestic courts. On 22 November 1999 the applicant party obtained a final judgment to the effect. It was immediately enforced and, that same day, the CEC registered the applicant party and allowed it to carry on its electoral campaign. Nevertheless, on 26 November 1999 a deputy prosecutor general lodged an application for supervisory review, requesting the Supreme Court to reopen the proceedings and to accept the CEC’s original approach. The Presidium of the Supreme Court subsequently quashed the earlier judgments by way of supervisoryreview proceedings and upheld the CEC’s position. The CEC annulled its earlier decisions, refused the registration of the applicant party’s list and ordered its name to be removed from the ballot papers. The applicant party appealed unsuccessfully. The Court noted that the final and enforceable judgment of 22 November 1999, which had cleared the way for the applicant party to stand in the elections, was quashed by means of supervisory-review proceedings on an application by a State official who was not a party to the proceedings. The purpose of his application was precisely to obtain a fresh determination of the issue that had been already settled. The Government did not point to any circumstances of a substantial and compelling character that could have justified that departure from the principle of legal certainty in the applicants’ case. As a result of the re-examination, the 198 See, for example, Orujov v. Azerbaijan, no. 4508/06, § 42, 26 July 2011, with further case-law references.