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"The Court considers that, in order to ensure the State's compliance with its positive obligation under Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 to hold free elections, the domestic courts dealing with the present case, having been called upon to decide on an arguable claim concerning election irregularities, should have reacted by taking reasonable steps to investigate the alleged irregularities without imposing unreasonable and excessively strict procedural barriers on the individual complainant. What was at stake in those proceedings was not only the alleged infringement of the applicant's individual rights but also, on a more general level, the State's compliance with its positive duty to hold free and fair elections. Therefore, even assuming that the courts in the present case might have been unable to decide the case solely on the basis of the evidence submitted by the applicant, the material put before them was nevertheless strong enough to require them to take additional steps to obtain more information and verify the accuracy of the applicant's allegations which cast doubt on the free and fair character of the elections in his constituency."
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