On April 29, Parliamentary and Municipality Sakrebulos By-elections and Extraordinary Mayoral elections will be held.

As the Spokesperson of the Central Election Commission (CEC) stated, “these are the first elections in which electronic technologies will be applied at such large scale. Therefore, it might be regarded as the most important part of the history of Georgian elections”.

The Election Administration (EA) is ready to transparently administer the April 29 elections at a high professional level following the legislation. We believe that each stakeholder can contribute to the successful conduct of the elections. Therefore, we would primarily like to call upon the citizens to be active, come to polls, cast votes, and experience how electronic technologies function. Furthermore, we would like to call upon the stakeholders - political parties, local non-governmental and international organizations, and media - to participate in the essential process of Georgia"s democratization, observe the elections, and get involved in introducing electronic elections. The successful conduct of election reform is the shared responsibility of every electoral stakeholder. We should support the conduct of the elections in compliance with international standards together since elections are a common cause.

The by/extraordinary elections will be held in 10 municipalities. Voters will elect a Majoritarian member of the Parliament of Georgia in Poti, Senaki, and Khobi; Majoritarian members of Sakrebulos in Gurjaani, Tianeti, Akhaltsikhe, Tkibuli, and Kutaisi and Mayors of Tsageri and Terjola.

A total of 165 electoral precincts will be opened. The polling by applying voter verification, voting, and vote counting devices will be held at 117 electoral precincts, and 91% of the total number of voters will participate. We would like to remind voters that the ballot paper will be different. In this case, a voter may not circle the candidate of his/her interest but instead, color the circle in front of the candidate"s name. The vote-counting device automatically counts the votes and prints the results of the preliminary voting report immediately after the end of the voting upon carrying out mandatory procedures. Indeed, it means that the time needed to publish the preliminary results is reduced significantly.

As for the other 48 electoral precincts (including 1 precinct placed at the penitentiary institution), the polling at mentioned precincts will be held according to the hitherto existing procedure, but in this case, the ballot papers will be digitized, uploaded to the relevant platform and available for every interested party.

It should be highlighted that electronic devices are not connected to the internet network, so there is no threat of cyber interference.

There is a novelty related to the usage of mobile ballot box – for the first time in given elections, voters who will vote by applying the mobile box will also go through the inking procedure.

In addition, it should be noted that the manual counting of ballot papers will be envisaged to ensure the transparency and credibility of elections. Only after that the summary protocols will be drawn up, scanned by tablet, and transferred directly to the CEC.

The total number of registered voters in the relevant majoritarian districts is 185 056 in all ten municipalities.

Notably, an unprecedented number of international organizations are registered to observe the elections – 55 international observers from 12 election administrations as well as international organizations and embassies. Additionally, 258 representatives of electoral subjects and 457 observers of 22 local observer organizations will observe the elections. 353 representatives of 19 media organizations will cover the electoral process.

The members of the relevant electoral commissions completed the multi-stage training regarding legislative novelties and the application of electronic technologies; they are ready to serve voters at a high professional level. The electoral precincts will open at 6:45 a.m., and the polling will commence at 8 a.m. The voter shall have the ID card or passport of a Georgian citizen”.