It is an exaggerated and incorrect assessment that a small shortcoming by ISFED caused a political crisis. It is speculation and misleading the public, Elene Nizharadze, the former ISFED executive director, declared at a press conference.

Elene Nizharadze was asked whether the parallel vote tabulation using the Serbian method stipulated for the so-called Serbian scenario where snap elections were called.

According to Nizharadze, there was a small percentage margin, which did not affect the number of mandates.

Elene Nizharadze noted that the programmer made a mistake when entered invalid ballots in the program.

“At the meeting with the NDI experts, we had oral communication, we were asked and informed about the fact that invalid ballots are not counted in Georgia. That was a human mistake. One did not understand, the other did not pay attention,” Nizharadze said.

ISFED released a statement on the parallel vote tabulation of Georgian parliamentary elections on December 11. The statement read that the internal audit results confirmed the accuracy of the PVT methodology. However, a technical fault was identified in the vote calculation formula. Namely, the formula counted the number of invalid ballots along with the votes received by the electoral subjects, ISFED informed. 

The adjusted ISFED PTV results coincided with the final results of the CEC.

ISFED spokesperson explained the parallel vote tabulation methodology at today’s briefing, noting that a Serbian PTV model was used, however, NDI experts involved in the process were not informed about the model, which also counts invalid ballots.

The Executive Director of ISFED, Elene Nizharadze, resigned yesterday.