Three independent observation missions have issued a joint assessment accusing Georgia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) of being complicit in ‘systematic violations that cast serious doubt’ on the legitimacy of the parliamentary elections.

The assessment was published on Wednesday by Georgian election watchdog the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED), election observer coalition We Vote, and the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA).

It was based on reports by the more than 3,500 observers they deployed to monitor the parliamentary elections on 26 October.

The official results of the elections gave the ruling Georgian Dream party a large majority, with 54% of the vote. However, local media and observer groups have documented widespread vote rigging by the ruling party.

In their joint report, the three groups said that they observed irregularities both during and after the voting process, suggesting that the ‘election was rigged in favour of the ruling party’.

They accused the CEC of being involved in rigging the elections, saying that the obstruction of observers could not have occurred without the tacit or active support of CEC officials.

‘Allowing unauthorised individuals into polling stations, installing surveillance cameras in sensitive areas, and ignoring improper inking procedures all suggest that the CEC facilitated practices designed to control voter behaviour and undermine transparency’, the report read.

‘Implementation of such complex fraud schemes would have been impossible without the support and direct involvement of state institutions such as the CEC, the Ministry of Interior, and the State Security Agency’.

They presented their individual findings, concluding their assessment with common findings and trends they had observed during the vote.

‘The range, scale, and consistency of the violations across the three observation missions strongly support the conclusion that this election was rigged through a combination of voter intimidation, obstruction of observation, and manipulation of voting procedures’, they stated in the assessment.

They also observed ballot secrecy violations, instances of multiple voting and inking irregularities, and pre-election manipulation.

[Read more: What OC Media observed during Georgia’s election]

In their individual findings, ISFED said that while their independent vote count, which took place in parallel to the CEC’s own count, aligned with the official results, ‘such alignment does not validate the election due to systemic pre-election intimidation, control of voters, and bribery’.

We Vote concluded that the violations noted on election day and in the subsequent processes ‘were not random but part of a calculated scheme to distort the final results’ of the elections.

‘They argued that a system of ID card confiscations, data gathering, and unauthorised presence created a coercive environment’, the statement read.

‘Their evidence points to a lack of intervention by the election administration and law enforcement, reinforcing the appearance of complicity by state actors in facilitating election fraud’.

GYLA reported that ‘the principle of voter secrecy was widely violated on election day, infringing upon the constitutional electoral rights guaranteed by the constitution of Georgia’.