Georgia updates its electoral list

The Ministry of Justice of Georgia has moved into the second stage of updating the country’s electoral list.

This stage will see Georgia’s National Agency of Public Registry collaborate with the Public Service Development Agency and compare their databases to identify and correct all possible discrepancies.

The ultimate purpose of these processes was to bring the country’s election list as close to perfection as possible for the 2016 Parliamentary Election.

The Ministry believed, thanks to such "coordinated work”, the election list would be protected from a number of potential errors, such as voters having their identities duplicated, not having names accompanied by photographs and deceased persons still being on the list.

The Justice Ministry said currently if a citizen died while abroad or in one of Georgia’s breakaway regions, which were currently not under Georgian control, the deceased’s families sometimes did not register the death, so the deceased person would still remain on the election list.

Meanwhile, the working process also reviewed an issue related to ensuring all people on the electoral roll had a corresponding address, even if they lived in a home without an obvious street name or number.

The Ministry said there were instances all throughout the country where there were unnamed streets or homes without numbers, and in this sense it was difficult to keep the election list precise. But once all locations were given addresses, it would be easier to identify a person at a voting station.

Last year Georgia’s State Services Development Agency spent months creating a photo-based election database so voters in the June 15 Municipal Elections were identified on the electoral list by their photograph as well as by their name and personal information.