8 KERIMOVA v. AZERBAIJAN JUDGMENT B. Merits 1. The parties' submissions 34. The Government submitted that the CEC's decision to invalidate the election results in the applicant's electoral constituency had been based on sound factual findings. These findings were subsequently proved to have been correct by the outcome of the criminal proceedings against the two officials of the ConEC for Sumgayit Second Electoral Constituency no. 42 and the PEC for Polling Station no. 17 of that constituency. Both of these officials confessed to having tampered with the election protocols. 35. 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 discretion to decide whether a recount of votes should be ordered in each particular case. The Government further argued that the 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in accordance with Article 106.3.6 of the Electoral Code in force at the material time (this provision was subsequently repealed in 2008), ballots which were not in envelopes were considered invalid.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. 36. The Government argued that the established incidents of tampering with election protocols had made it impossible for the CEC to determine the true will of the voters on the basis of those protocols. 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 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 the Parliament. 37. The applicant submitted that she had won the election convincingly by a high margin of votes. The relevant results protocols, both before and after the tampering, indicated her as a winner. Although the tampering with the election protocols resulted in a considerable reduction in the total number of votes counted as cast for her, and a corresponding increase in the number of those cast for her main opponent, she was still the clear winner of the election even according to the results reflected in the protocols which had been tampered with. Thus, even after the tampering, the relevant protocols showed that the applicant had won by a margin of 1,259 votes. 38. The applicant noted that all the impermissible changes introduced to the election protocols had been made in favour of her opponents, and not in her favour. Despite this, the CEC failed to comply with Article 114.5 of the