The Central Election Commission of Georgia (CEC) responded to the ISFED claims due to the high public interest. The CEC commented in a statement on the imbalances reported by ISFED on November 1 and in the updated results of the parallel vote count on December 11.

“According to the data processed by the CEC, the so-called imbalance related to excess in the number of ballots against the number of voters is recorded in only 19 summary protocols or 0.52% of the main precincts opened in Georgia. We would like to remind you that 3,657 polling stations were opened throughout Georgia (this number does not include special and overseas polling stations). Consequently, the official data does not confirm the ISFED’s appeal to the abundance of ballot papers in eight percent of precincts,” the CEC statement reads.

It is noteworthy that the election administration processed the data in detail and prepared statistical information based on the precinct summary protocols and the relevant correction protocols as early as November 4. According to the statistics processed, the imbalance that caused questions and is related to the excess number of ballots against the number of voters (signatures) was reported in 60 polling stations, which is 1.64 percent of the total number of precincts opened in Georgia.

“Given the above information, it is unclear what exactly the ISFED –reported imbalance in 8% of the precincts means. These data are radically different and substantially miss the official CEC summary protocol statistics,” the statement reads.

The CEC assumed that the ISFED did not take into account the amendment protocols of the precinct election commissions, which are an integral part of the precinct summary protocols. That is why it needs to be clarified, more information needs to be provided for the objective study of the issue, and the credibility of the process in general,” the CEC declared in a statement.
The Election Administration expresses its readiness to cooperate with ISFED or any interested party in this and any other election issue.

On December 11, the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) reported mismatches of 8% of the polling station protocols as a result of the PVT. At the same time, the watchdog informed on a technical fault identified in the vote calculation formula, when some invalid ballots were counted along with the votes received by the electoral subjects.