Georgia conducts partial vote recount after reports of polling irregularities

TBILISI – Georgia’s central electoral commission said it would recount ballots at 14 per cent of polling stations on Oct 29 after independent monitors raised concerns about the conduct of Oct 26’s parliamentary election.

Official results said the governing Georgian Dream party won nearly 54 per cent of the vote, but pro-Western opposition parties and Georgia’s President have said the result was rigged. Thousands of people protested on Oct 28 night in the capital Tbilisi.

The European Union, Nato and the United States have demanded a full investigation into reports of vote-buying, voter intimidation and ballot stuffing raised by monitors from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and other bodies.

The election commission, which previously hailed the vote as free and fair, said it would conduct a recount of ballots in five randomly selected polling stations in each of Georgia's 84 electoral districts.

It did not say when the results of the recount would be made public.

“To ensure transparency, all authorised representatives are invited to observe the ballot recount process,” the commission said in a statement.

Official results showed that Georgian Dream won 1.12 million votes – 335,000 votes more than the combined four main opposition parties, which are deeply divided.

The party won huge margins of up to 90 per cent in some rural areas, but underperformed in Tbilisi and other large cities.

My Vote, a Georgian monitoring coalition, said it had uncovered evidence of “large-scale election fraud” confirmed by photographs, videos and eyewitness testimonies from its observers.

It said it had logged over 900 reports of voting irregularities at over a third of polling stations across the country and was taking its findings to the electoral commission. REUTERS