According to Ketevan Chachava, a fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, “the polling station results we are seeing now are based on the electronic voting machines — around two-thirds of the overall, but that could still change. However, the expectation is that Georgian Dream’s votes would be lower than previous elections and this figure is actually higher than predicted and they’re clearly in a strong position.”
Opposition parties have cried foul over what they said amounted to systematic efforts to influence the result by the increasingly authoritarian government, which has vowed to ban its opponents from taking up their seats and outlaw rival factions if re-elected with a sufficient majority.
“They are stuffing ballot boxes, bullying voters and beating observers,” said Bokuchava, leader of the largest opposition party in the coalition. “These are not the actions of a government who believe in free and fair elections.”
Photos and videos posted online throughout the day showed disruption at polling stations around the country, with claims one ballot box had been dumped in the street and a clip of a Georgian Dream politician purportedly stuffing a stack of ballots into another. One opposition observer was beaten in the city of Marneuli, near to the capital of Tbilisi, while local journalists were attacked by unidentified individuals.
One foreign election observer, granted anonymity to speak candidly with POLITICO, said there had been a brawl in another polling station, close to the country’s border with neighboring Azerbaijan. “We’ve witnessed ballot-stuffing attempts where the perpetrators were discovered, ran away, and then simply waited for observers to leave before trying again,” the observer said. “Given the number of similar accusations from other polling stations, I’m afraid international observers will have a very hard time acknowledging these elections as fair.”
The International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED), a Tbilisi-based NGO, said in a statement that “incidents and violations were recorded throughout the country during the voting process.” One in ten of its election observers reported problems, including allegations of voters being bussed in by Georgian Dream co-ordinators, it said.