The United States has full confidence in ISFED. It’s a highly respected and experienced election monitoring organization. Such a statement made the US Ambassador to Georgia.

“ISFED participated in last summer’s electoral reform working group that was chaired by the current Speaker and that produced some important, very useful electoral reform legislation that was subsequently adopted by the Parliament. I think it’s also important to remember, and perhaps review, the assessments that were made by ODIHR, OSCE, and the international and domestic election monitors for the 2020 and 2021 elections.

All of them pointed to serious violations: voter intimidation, vote buying, carousel voting, abuse of administrative resources, and other violations that occurred in the weeks leading up to the election as well as on election day. None of the reports assessed these elections as being fair. ISFED was not responsible for those violations. I think it’s clear that they did not play a role in those violations that were the cause for the public losing confidence in the outcome of the election results.

In fact, as soon as ISFED confirmed that there had been a PVT miscalculation, which was determined to be an insignificant statistical measure, ISFED informed the public immediately and released the information fully. That is why we have full confidence in ISFED as a professional election monitoring organization. They were transparent about a mistake that happened as soon as they were able to confirm it. And that is why it is so important that ISFED and other civil society organizations - that have expertise in election monitoring and conducting elections - are able to participate in Georgia’s electoral reform working groups. That’s what the European Commission encouraged: an inclusive process that ensured that all stakeholders had a chance to contribute to improving Georgia’s electoral system”, - said Kelly Degnan.