Georgian Dream accused of using call centres to monitor and pressure voters

An investigative TV show aired by Pirveli has alleged that Georgian Dream used call centres to monitor and pressure voters, employed bogus observers, and confiscated voters’ IDs in exchange for money to cast fraudulent votes.

The show, Nodar Meladzis Shabati (‘Nodar Meladze’s Saturday’), hosted by Nodar Meladze, aired on Saturday.

It cited ‘around 1,000’ digital files, including text and voice messages, images, video footage, and Excel and Word documents as evidence — material they have admitted to not having fully processed by the time of airing. The programme alleged  that Georgian Dream operated approximately 6,000 ‘call centres’ to monitor voter turnout on election day and pressure voters if they did not cast their ballots in time.

They said that the ruling party set up call centres assigned to each polling station across Georgia. The centres were allegedly located near these stations in rented flats, or, in some cases, within the same building as the station itself.

The programme highlighted an example of a call centre supposedly organised in the office of a school director at the 30th public school in Tbilisi, located just above the polling station on the ground floor. Another one was found in the Chughureti Kitchen for Socially Vulnerable people in Tbilisi.

According to the report, the ruling party maintained an electronic database of voters, each assigned a specific number and monitored by individuals — sometimes as many as three — responsible for ensuring they appeared at the polling station.

Call centres would be supervised by a designated ‘captain’ who held the ultimate responsibility for turnout at respective stations. Georgian Dream reportedly managed its 6,000 captains through a computer programme accessed via personal ID numbers and a one-time SMS code, which expires after 30 seconds of its delivery.

The programme went on to claim that captains were regularly required to update voter turnout numbers in real-time, allowing party leaders to closely monitor voting turnouts throughout the day. As the day progressed, party operatives reportedly began contacting captains, urging them to intensify efforts to mobilise additional voters.

The programme aired several voice messages purported to have been leaked from Georgian Dream, with one message warning call centres that the party was ‘50%’ below its target numbers, while another reported a shortfall of 30%.

‘All call centres should start calling the responsible individuals because the turnout numbers are very low. Begin calling all responsible individuals urgently within six minutes’, a person in one of the aired recordings was heard saying, indicating he sent the message in the morning before 09:30.

In one of the audio recordings allegedly sent to call centres by a party operative, the speaker indicated that they could monitor how actively call centre staff were contacting the prospective voters assigned to them on their lists.

In Saturday’s episode, the show identified prominent lawyer Aleksandre Kobaidze as one of the ‘captains’ allegedly operating a ‘call centre’ from his Tbilisi apartment. When asked to comment on a database including him as a captain, Kobaidze told the programme’s reporter: ‘I confirm that I was assisting Georgian Dream; there’s nothing to hide here’. When asked what the role of captain entailed, Kobaidze claimed that ‘the captain is responsible for the person who, let’s say, has a direct connection with the party’.

Bogus election observers and ID fraud

The show also reported that ‘semi-criminal’ groups were positioned outside polling centres nationwide on election day, allegedly preventing certain voters from entering if they were suspected of not supporting the ruling party. They also reportedly accompanied and controlled voters directly at the ballot booth.

The Pirveli programme reported that these incidents took place at polling stations in Tbilisi as well as in remote voting stations in Georgia.

They reported that the Observer of Politics and Law, an organisation founded by lawyer  Grigol Gagnidze who, together with his spouse, Eka Aghladze, running a similar group, in total managed as many as 5,146 bogus election observers.

The observers would be identifiable by visible badges, and were present at various polling stations, including in Dmanisi, where they allegedly instructed voters on how to vote and held lists of voters who were reportedly paid or expected to be paid for their ballots cast. 

Among these bogus observers, the show claimed, were members of local municipal authorities, including Beka Mikautadze, the governor of Tbilisi’s Krtsanisi District, who was registered as part of the Association of Women Entrepreneurs of Khashuri.

The show alleged that the ruling party used bogus observers under their control deployed at the polling stations also to create chaos and conflict, distracting genuinely independent observers, including media workers. This tactic was reportedly used in situations where Georgian Dream was believed to be struggling, allowing voter registrars to falsify results with confiscated IDs of actually absent voters with less scrutiny.

A key method of election fraud the show reported on involved voters arriving at polling stations with a piece of paper containing another person’s ID number, with complicit registrars processing them as legitimate voters. The slips of paper were often placed inside the passport of a fraudulent voter, a practice corroborated by several observer groups on election day.

The show cited several cases, including video clips purportedly proving them, of people voting with others’ IDs, including two separate alleged cases of men attempting to vote with women’s IDs. 

They highlighted Ninotsminda and Akhalkalaki, southern Georgian municipalities with a large ethnic Armenian population, as regions where the ruling party secured high turnout and strong support through alleged fraud, including vote buying and ID manipulation.

Georgian Dream secured 90% support in Ninotsminda and 89% in Akhalkalaki according to the preliminary results.

The initial figures that emerged hours after polls closed on 26 October were at times accompanied by anti-Armenian and anti-Azerbaijani remarks online from some Georgian government critics, specifically highlighting the high numbers of votes cast in favour of the ruling party in areas with large ethnic Armenian and Azerbaijani communities. These comments resurfaced again following Pirveli’s report on Saturday.

To illustrate fraud in the region, the show’s crew visited several villages and settlements in Ninotsminda and Akhalkalaki, including Aspara, Didi Samsari, Tirkna, Ikhtila, and Sameba, where the reporter misled local residents by posing as a Georgian Dream party mobiliser. While being candidly filmed, various residents confirmed that their ID documents had been confiscated, and they were paid between ₾100–200 ($36–$73) for them.