Central Election Commission recounts votes of 812 district election commissions
The Georgian Central Election Commission says that the recount of votes revealed no major violations. Photo: Nino Alavidze/Agenda.ge.
Tweet 
Share
The Georgian Central Election Commission (CEC) has recounted votes in 812 of 3,664 district election commissions following the October 2 municipal elections because of complaints and according to recent legal changes which oblige the CEC to recount a certain number of votes to recheck their validity.
The CEC says that results in more than 66 per cent of the 812 district election commissions remained the same, while minor errors, ‘which could not make any influence on the October 2 municipal election results, have been observed.
360 of the 812 district election commissions were randomly selected.
In 257 of the 810 district election commissions local NGOs had requested the recount of votes due to complaints or there were more invalid ballot papers recorded than in other commissions.
Georgia will hold mayoral and majoritarian runoffs in 20 of 64 election constituencies on October 30.
In 17 of the 20 election constituencies the candidates of the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party and the United National Movement (UNM) opposition will compete.
According to the final results of the first round in the race, the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party received 46.74 per cent of the vote, the United National Movement (UNM) opposition party received 30.68 per cent of the vote while ex-PM Giorgi Gakharia’s For Georgia party garnered 7.79 per cent of the vote.
Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili says that the local elections in Georgia were ‘calm, fair, secure, and competitive’ without significant violations despite the difficult political and polarised electoral environment.
The OSCE/ODIHR mission, which has monitored the October 2 municipal elections in Georgia, says that the elections ‘were generally well-administered but held against the backdrop of a protracted political crisis and characterised by hardened polarisation.’
The International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) has released the results of a parallel vote tabulation (PVT) of the proportional elections for Tbilisi and regional cities, which says that the ruling Georgian Dream party received 46.6% of the vote, while the United National Movement received 31.1% of the vote.
Transparency International Georgia, which filed 42 complaints and seven lawsuits on and after the October 2 municipal elections, reports that neither district election commissions nor courts have upheld any significant complaints. The organisation, which monitored the elections with the help of 300 observers, notes that the district election commissions and courts upheld just four complaints and one lawsuit seeking disciplinary actions against some of the election administration representatives.