HAJILI v. AZERBAIJAN JUDGMENT 13 However, it observes that, unlike the Kerimova judgment, where it was apparent from the established facts that the applicant would have won the election had the election results not been invalidated arbitrarily (ibid., §§ 9 and 47), in the present case it is not possible to establish with certainty that the applicant would have won the election in his electoral constituency. Specifically, while the applicant claimed that he had received the highest number of votes based on the copies of PEC results records in his possession, no similar aggregated vote count showing him as the winner has ever been officially produced by the relevant ConECs or CEC (unlike in the Kerimova case). In this respect, the Court notes that, unless it is rendered unavoidable by the circumstances of the case, it is not the Court’s task to substitute itself for domestic electoral authorities or to take on the function of a first-instance tribunal of fact by attempting to determine the exact vote counts on the basis of records of election results issued by electoral commissions of the lowest level or to determine who should have won the elections in the applicant’s constituency (see, mutatis mutandis, Namat Aliyev, cited above, § 77). Nevertheless, it is sufficiently clear from the facts of the case that the applicant was one of the frontrunners among other candidates in his electoral constituency and that the authorities’ decision to annul the election results affected the applicant’s chances of being elected to the National Assembly. In this connection, the Court also reiterates that Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 guarantees not a right to win the election per se, but a right to stand for election in fair and democratic conditions (ibid., § 75). 50. Moreover, it is true that in the present case, prior to the CEC decision on the annulment of the election, the applicant had complained to the CEC about alleged irregularities perpetrated against him in three polling stations of the constituency. It could therefore be argued that the CEC decision followed a relevant request by the applicant. However, the CEC decision went manifestly beyond what had been requested of it by the applicant and invalidated the election results in a greater number of polling stations of the constituency, resulting in an invalidation of the election results in the constituency as a whole. 51. Having regard to the above considerations, the Court considers that the CEC decision to annul the elections constituted an interference with the applicant’s effective exercise of his right to stand for election. It remains to be determined whether this interference was compatible with the requirements of Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention. 52. The Government contended that the impugned decision on the invalidation of election results had been aimed at protecting the free expression of the voters’ opinion from illegal interference and ensuring that only the rightfully elected candidates represented the voters in parliament. However, the Court has doubts as to whether a practice of discounting all votes cast in an entire electoral constituency owing merely to the fact that