The Georgian Central Election Commission has responded to a report that in eight per cent of polling stations, ballot papers outnumbered voters’ signatures on the list.
The International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) NGO stated yesterday that ‘it is a serious violation’ and urged the CEC to recount the votes in these locations.
Georgian Public Defender Nino Lomjaria has also called on the CEC to respond to the issue, adding that ‘this is the first time in eight years’ that the data of the parallel vote count released by ISFED did not match the official data released by the CEC’.
The CEC said in an official statement that the reports could be a ‘deliberate campaign to harm the image of the Central Election Commission.’
The imbalance in precinct election commissions’ (PECs) summaries of election results could be caused by objective circumstances. Namely, in a number of cases, a voter participating in elections by proportional electoral system, has no right to participate in elections by the majoritarian electoral system if the voter does not vote according to their place of registration. The latter causes an imbalance and the difference between the total number of votes cast for electoral subjects and the number of voters participating in the voting,” CEC said.
CEC said that if the imbalance is caused by an error made while entering the data in the summaries, the amendment document and explanations of members of relevant PEC eliminates the inaccuracy.