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On Saturday, Georgians went to the polls amid a tense atmosphere. A video began circulating of a man attempting to stuff multiple ballots while election observers tried to stop him. Dozens of people and cameras were present, and the footage quickly spread across local, international, and social media platforms.

Additional videos of scuffles outside polling stations also gained wide attention, painting a picture of widespread violence and ballot-stuffing. Additional videos of scuffles outside polling stations also gained wide attention, painting a picture of widespread violence and ballot-stuffing.

As voting ended, three exit polls appeared, each commissioned by different forces. The Edison poll, which favored the opposition, showed the various forces critical of the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party total 51 percent of the vote — enough to form a government.

They declared victory, with President Salome Zourabichvili — head of state, but today an opponent of the government — thanking the electorate for their political maturity and “Europeanity [sic].”

Yet, the pro-government poll had the ruling party at 56 percent, and the other opposition poll put it at 41-42 percent.Both camps claimed victory, though at first Western media largely reported on the opposition’s supposed lead.

As the count progressed, Georgian Dream maintained a lead of over 50 percent, and President Zourabichvili suddenly fell silent. The opposition, which had been running parallel vote counts, stopped releasing their data. One by one, opposition parties declared the election had been rigged.

By Sunday, all eyes were on the international observers, as they prepared to release their findings. With over five hundred observers — including delegations from the EU Parliament, Council of Europe, and NATO — monitoring more than two thousand polling stations, their verdict carried weight.

The joint observation mission’s report sharply criticized Georgian Dream, blaming the government for creating a toxic and polarized preelection environment. They highlighted controversial laws, such as the foreign influence law requiring NGOs and media to disclose foreign funding.

Yet the observers did not declare the election itself had been rigged. They noted that incidents like the ballot-stuffing video were rare, with only one out of three thousand polling stations involved, and that it had been swiftly handled.

Additionally, they mentioned only a handful of double-voting attempts, which were prevented. Of the 1,924 observations, 6 percent were assessed negatively, citing issues like observer interference (16 percent), overcrowding (16 percent), improper use of secrecy sleeves (9 percent), incorrect polling station layout (8 percent), and visible ballot marks (6 percent).

They stressed that the elections were generally well-administered and said they’d continue observing the post-election process for further complaints. Despite repeated questions from journalists, the observers refused to declare the election fraudulent, disappointing the opposition.

Later that evening, President Zourabichvili held a press conference flanked by three of the four signatories to her Charter, as the united opposition camp is known. She denounced the elections as “totally rigged,” likening their recognition to a Russian occupation, saying, “Russian elections were held.”

She then retweeted a chart from an Twitter/X user attempting to prove fraud, with the caption “Cannot get any clearer,” offering no further explanation of the data. This chart raises suspicion over the pattern of Georgian Dream’s sky-high scores in rural areas.

Since then, Zourabichvili has mobilized her resources and contacts within Western governments and media, with a blitz of coverage to convince Western public opinion that Russia fixed the Georgian elections.

Few journalists pressed her with tough questions. When asked for proof of Russian interference, she responded, “It’s very hard to demonstrate. No country, not even the United States or European nations, has been able to prove Russian interference in their elections.”

Opposition spokesmen have used allegations like Russian- (or even Soviet-)style propaganda, anti-Western rhetoric, and fearmongering about war as part of their claims that the election was rigged.

Zourachvili suggested that Georgia, with fewer resources than the United States, shouldn’t be expected to provide proof either. Instead, she emphasized, “What’s important is what the Georgian population feels.”

but Zourabichvili’s claims also relied heavily on a rather faulty assumption. She argued that the elections simply must have been rigged because opinion polls have consistently shown that Georgians want EU integration, yet the election results favored Georgian Dream.

If voters want to join the EU, why vote for this party? The truth is a little more complicated. For Georgian Dream, which made the bid for EU membership part of the national constitution in 2018, also promises to pursue this same goal, and their campaign in this election even widely used the EU flag.

What the president disputes is this compatibility. She gloats about her access to the Western heads of government who refuse to meet with Georgian Dream — so, she upholds the EU leadership’s approved version of pro-Europeanness, and anything else is straightforwardly “pro-Russian.”

This Manichean picture is also apparent in her citing of the large protests in March against the NGO law, mostly in Tbilisi. She asked, “Where are those thousands of people now? Did they disappear?” — implying that the protests included the entire population, which ought to have been mirrored in the election results.

She frequently reiterated claims of ballot-stuffing, double-voting, and election rigging without providing specifics on the scale or proof of these allegations. Having earlier reassured the public that Georgia’s first use of electronic voting was secure, she now claimed it had been used to manipulate the results.

At a protest she called for this Monday, Zourabichvili announced that they would use the time to gather evidence of election rigging for their Western allies. Meanwhile, Zourabichvili, formerly French ambassador to Georgia, leveraged her connections to urge Western governments to withhold recognition of the election results until she could provide proof of “total” rigging.

Other opposition members echoed her calls, with some demanding a new election overseen entirely by foreign supervisors and vowing to boycott parliament until that happened. Some opposition leaders claimed they had stayed up all night after the election trying to figure out how the votes were rigged, while others admitted they still needed time to gather evidence.

We are still waiting for concrete proof. There are indeed competing theories about what kind of rigging took place — with some suggesting it would be better to choose one lead and work to generate the evidence of that one in particular.

Read the rest here:

In Georgia, Vote-Rigging Claims Leave Nation Deeply Split Georgia’s opposition labeled Saturday’s election “totally rigged.” But its insistence that the ruling party’s campaign relied on fearmongering propaganda points to a different story: the opposition st… https://jacobin.com/2024/10/georiga-vote-rigging-election

Vir: Sopo Japaridze