The majority of the SEC also refers to two previous decisions, of 1963 and 2014. In those decisions, the SEC had already taken the view that if the election of a mayoral candidate is annulled upon objection for reasons having their root in the pre-election period, the candidate with the second highest number of votes shall be deemed to have been elected. The Venice Commission does not however consider that those decisions can be said to provide a sufficiently clear legal basis and the Commission has serious doubts as to whether these earlier decisions were themselves compatible with international standards of democracy and the rule of law for similar reasons to those explained in the present opinion. In addition, it is emphasised that the present case is specific in the sense that the election bodies had first validated the candidacies and later annulled them for reasons which were already publicly known before the elections and at the time of approval of candidacy.