A leading election monitoring group in Georgia has raised concerns over new amendments adopted by the Central Election Commission (CEC), warning that the changes could severely restrict transparency in the upcoming electoral process.
Nino Dolidze, chairwoman of the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED), on Friday said the new rules hinder observers’ ability to detect electoral fraud – particularly the so-called “carousel voting”, where individuals vote multiple times or use someone else’s identity to cast a ballot.
In a post shared on social media, Dolidze published what she claimed to be a screenshot of the CEC resolution, adopted on February 6, 2023, outlining the revised procedures for electronic voting.
The amendments explicitly prohibit anyone entitled to be present at polling stations, including observers, from demanding or confiscating a voter’s identity document. It also bans photographing or filming voter IDs, data from verification machines, or the ballot choices made by voters.
“With this amendment, observers will no longer be able to detect individuals who are trying to vote on behalf of others,” Dolidze wrote, adding that this method of fraud was among the most commonly reported in previous elections.
Allegations of carousel voting resurfaced during Georgia’s parliamentary elections held on 26 October 2024. Observer groups, including ISFED, reported numerous irregularities, including multiple voting, impersonation, voter intimidation, and violations of ballot secrecy.
President Salome Zourabichvili, along with opposition parties and local observer organizations, declared the election fraudulent. The OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) also expressed doubts about the integrity of the results.
Georgia’s Prosecutor’s Office launched an investigation into alleged election fraud following the October vote. However, the credibility of the probe has been widely questioned, with critics citing a lack of transparency and growing politicization within the country’s state institutions.
In an interim update released on 15 January 2025, the Prosecutor’s Office provided few details about the status of the investigation. Just ten days later, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, head of the ruling Georgian Dream party, claimed that “there are no facts or evidence of election fraud in nature.”
