Parliament Speaker rejects “manipulative, speculative” NGO report on electronic voting

Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili on Monday rejected a new report by the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy on electronic voting machines to be used in the 2024 parliamentary elections across the country as “totally manipulative and speculative”.

In his remarks over the report, which was published in late November and criticised the reliability of the systems on the backdrop of the introduction of electronic voting in the country, Papuashvili claimed “it seems preparations are underway to discredit the 2024 elections”. 

We have recently seen once again that the ISFED has shown themselves to be involved in attempts to discredit electoral processes, we have seen their so-called ‘report’ regarding the electronic voting that is manipulative and speculative”, he alleged.

“This raises very serious suspicions that it appears that preparations are already underway for them to discredit the 2024 elections”, Papuashvili added.

He also stressed it was “important” for international donors of domestic non-governmental organisations to “pay attention to what their taxpayers’ money is spent on”.

The lawmaker claimed ​​the donors’ responsibility was “emerging ahead of that of the NGOs”, and warned “we take this matter very seriously this time, so that donors feel responsible [about the fact that] this is also their international responsibility”.

The chief Georgian legislator also said all identification cards issued to citizens before 2011 - prior to the introduction of electronic IDs across the country - would lose their legal validity and claimed a part of the domestic opposition had “always used the matter for speculation” with regard to elections.

Papuashvili said the decision on revoking old identity papers had been taken together with the opposition and added citizens would be able to receive the current IDs at their locations free of charge.