Editorial | Georgia’s rigged election

Georgia’s parliamentary elections were neither free nor fair, and with overwhelming evidence that the vote was rigged, the elections, and the incoming government, cannot be considered legitimate.

When Georgians went to the polls on 26 October to elect a new parliament, they did so in an environment of fear mongering and intimidation, and one with a myriad of new repressive laws in place.

The ruling party centred its campaign on their claim that an opposition victory would mean war with Russia and lead to the indoctrination of Georgian children to become gay or transgender. They also focussed heavily on their promise to ban and prosecute the opposition, with one of their satellite groups even suggesting that anyone who voted for the opposition could face criminal charges.

On the day of the vote, the 13 journalists we deployed across the country, a drop in the ocean as far as the election was concerned, still personally witnessed repeated, widespread, and blatant violations of voter secrecy, as well as attempts to intimidate and bribe voters.

Local observer groups, who deployed thousands of observers on election day, have issued damning assessments of what they saw.

WeVote, a coalition of 29 non-governmental organisations formed in the run up to the election, say they have uncovered a ‘scheme of large-scale election fraud’ prepared by the authorities to rig the election. They documented photographic and video evidence as well as eyewitness testimony showing widespread multiple voting using copies of identification documents illegally collected before the vote.

In the run up to the vote, there were widespread reports that ID documents were being confiscated.

Election watchdog ISFED said the day after the election that the results of the elections ‘cannot be seen as truly reflecting the preferences of Georgian voters’. They listed a number of reasons to have reached such a conclusion, such as voter pressure, intimidation, confiscation of identity cards, collection and processing of personal data, ballot box stuffing, multiple voting, bribery of voters on ‘an unprecedented scale’, expulsion of observers from polling stations, as well as the mobilisation of voters outside polling stations, collecting their personal data, and influencing their choice.

The Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA), established 30 years ago, has built a reputation for being both professional and non-partisan in their pursuit of human rights. Based on the findings of their own 600-strong observation mission, they have called for the annulment of the results from 2,263 of 3,111 polling stations where electronic voting technology was used, citing the violation of voter secrecy. This would require a new election to be held.

If direct evidence were not enough, there is also much circumstantial evidence.

Electoral authorities have disregarded growing calls to make vote records accessible to the voters, which would allow individuals to verify that their votes were accurately recorded or that their absentee ballots were not misused by others as many suspect.

Public opinion polling in the years before the vote, while scarce, confirmed the widespread perception that Georgia’s anti-Western and authoritarian turn had damaged Georgian Dream’s popularity. In such a situation, results showing that Georgian Dream increased their vote share from 48% in 2020 to 54% in 2024 beggar belief.

Exit polls conducted by US polling firm Edison Research have in previous elections proven to be by far the closest to the official results. In 2024, they projected a 41% share of the vote for Georgian Dream, 13% off from the official results. Both Edison Research and HarrisX, whose exit poll gave a similar projection, have insisted the discrepancy could only be explained by the manipulation of the vote.

Europe Elects, a German poll aggregator and research and analysis firm, has said that a statistical analysis of the results showed evidence of ‘widespread tampering in favour of the government’.

Calls for the Georgian authorities to investigate their own misconduct from countries who know full well that Georgia’s judiciary is under the government’s thumb, are beyond meaningless.

OC Media takes its responsibility as a source of trusted information about the Caucasus extremely seriously, and the decision to declare an election fraudulent is not something we take lightly. But given the overwhelming weight of evidence, it would be impossible to conclude anything but that the result of these elections cannot be said to reflect the will of the Georgian people. The actions the Georgian Dream party have taken to outright rig the vote have made a mockery of democracy, and of Georgia’s constitution.

As such, for any individual or organisation, including OC Media, to consider these results legitimate, or to consider the current government the legitimate representation of the Georgian people, would likewise make a mockery of the will of the Georgian people.