Georgian Dream initiates holding elections electronically in Georgia. Such a statement made today the Chairman of the ruling party.

“The Government is actively working on the implementation of the 12-point plan established by the European Union, one of the points of which is the revision of the “Georgian Election Code”.

In order to implement the relevant reform, a working group was created in the Parliament. A package of draft laws will be developed by the working group, which will essentially be based on the recommendations of the OSCE/ODIHR and the topics discussed in the working group with the involvement of political parties and civil society representatives.

Part of the proposals presented in the working group was related to the large-scale introduction of electronic technologies in the electoral process. In this regard, the Georgian Dream made a decision on the large-scale introduction of voter registration and voting with electronic equipment from 2024.

In 2021 the voting procedure was carried out in the Krtsanisi district, Tbilisi, using fully electronic equipment. This year, with the use of electronic equipment, the interim elections were held in 8 polling stations of Batumi. The successful experience of voter registration and voting with modern technologies allows us to implement this initiative on a large-scale from 2024.

According to our decision, in the majority of election precincts, including all cities and large settlements, which includes at least 70% of voters, voter registration and voting will be carried out using electronic equipment.

Electronic voting will finally strengthen the public’s confidence in the vote counting process, eliminate the problem of imbalance in the electoral process, and forever end the so-called speculation in relation to election carousels, it ensures that more than 70% of voters’ votes are counted and the results are published within a few minutes of the end of the voting process, as well as removing the problems associated with exit polls and parallel counting of votes (the so-called PVT).

This decision will be one of the most important constituent parts of the electoral reform, which will minimize the problem of manipulation of election results”, - said Irakli Kobakhidze.