Activity Type: Monitoring

TI Georgia monitored the use of administrative resources during the 2008 presidential and parliamentary elections. The monitoring included:

a.interviews with the leaders of various political parties participating in the elections, representatives of Georgian and international NGOs involved in election monitoring, and state institutions involved in election administration;
b.analyzing the allocation of state funds during the pre-election period based on official documentation;
c.analyzing political advertising and coverage of political candidates through selected media outlets;
d.analyzing election legislation and the decisions of the Central Election Commission; and
e.observing the pre-election activities of the ruling party.
The misuse of administrative resources has been cited as a problem in Georgia in every election since 2003. After the presidential election in January 2008, TI Georgia has made specific recommendations about how to reduce the use of administrative resources during election campaigns. Unfortunately, despite the need and the advocacy work done by both domestic and international organizations on this issue, the Election Code was not modified to limit the use of administrative resources in advance of the parliamentary elections. Rather, legislation has been made more liberal instead of more restrictive. Public officials were still allowed to engage in pre-election campaigning activities, with few exceptions indicated in the law, and election candidates were granted the right to use material-technical resources funded from the state and local budgets as long as these resources are equally accessible for all of them.

On May 2008 TI Georgia conducted a monitoring of the polling and counting procedures in the region of Kvemo Kartli. The organization deployed its monitors to 110 polling stations in the following five election districts: Marneuli, Gardabani, Bolnisi, Dmanisi, and Tsalka, thus covering 40% of the polling stations in the region with 51% of voters in those five districts. The monitoring targeted precincts with the highest numbers of registered voters in the respective districts and ones where the majority of registered voters were ethnic minorities.
In 56 out of the 110 polling stations monitored by TI Georgia the monitors noted significant breaches of election legislation. The problems ranged from poor the qualifications of the Precinct Election Commission (PEC) members carouseling the voting, ballot stuffing, other duties. A total of 137 appeals have been compiled involving election violations in all 110 precincts.
Among the most frequently observed violations were: Precinct Election Commission members agitating voters in the polling station in favor of the ruling party, voters marking ballot papers outside polling booths, voters being allowed to vote without presenting ID cards or upon presenting other persons’ ID cards, proxy voting, inconsistent application of inking, Precinct Election Commission members following voters into polling booths, voters entering polling booths in groups of two and more, the presence of unauthorized persons during polling and counting procedures, and the correcting of summary protocols. In addition to these problems, the electoral process was marred by the refusal of Precinct Election Commissions to register TI Georgia’s and other election day monitors’ appeals.