Georgia’s election body says American company audit confirms electronic voting devices “functioned reliably”

Georgia’s Central Election Commission on Sunday said the American auditing company Pro V&V had delivered the results of the first two phases of its compliance audit about  the electronic voting technology used in Georgia’s parliamentary elections on Saturday and found the devices had “functioned reliably”.

The CEC noted the company was one of two that held the necessary accreditation from relevant authorities in the United States,  had “many years of experience” in the US and was authorised not only to test voting systems but also to issue licences to vendor companies.

Giorgi Kalandarishvili, the Chair of the CEC, said the report released by the company “addresses all myths, misinformation and questions that exist regarding the technologies”.

Kalandarishvili said Pro V&V Director  Jack Cobb had set out a three-phase auditing process to ensure reliability of the voting devices that included:

• Examining the source code of the election devices to understand how voter lists are managed, and tracing the integration of voter lists within each verification device module by module
• Ensuring that voter lists on CEC servers match those in each device, with no duplicate entries
• Confirming that the printed voter list matches the device list and each vote is counted correctly

Representatives from the Smartmatic company also attended a meeting at the election administration since the entity was selected as the winning vendor through a tender conducted by Georgia’s State Procurement Agency on the basis of their “experience in modernising elections in over 30 countries and providing technological support for one of the largest election districts in the US and multiple other countries”, the CEC statement reads.

Frans Gunnink, the Managing Director And Global Services Director EMEA at Smartmatic, pointed out members of polling stations in Georgia were “well-prepared” and knew “very well how to act in the event of disruptions or unexpected developments”

He added the technology “also facilitated all of this as anticipated” on election day, adding he had personally observed the voting at precincts.

Gunnink added “minor shortcomings” had been noted during the voting,  but added they were “entirely understandable and should not raise doubts about the functioning of the technology”.