On February 28, 2020, the Election Observation Mission of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR EOM) published the final report on the 2018 presidential election in Georgia. The report provided a positive assessment of the activities of the Public Service Development Agency of the Ministry of Justice in relation to improving the electoral register.
The report notes that “more than 3.5 million citizens have been registered to vote in the elections. The governmental agencies have taken appropriate measures to improve the accuracy of electoral registers and provide voters with an opportunity to verify their details. Most parties involved in the election process expressed confidence in the trustability of the electoral registers”. The document highlights the efforts made by the Public Service Development Agency of the Ministry of Justice of Georgia to clarify and enhance the electoral register.”The work carried out by the Public Service Development Agency in improving the quality of electoral registers is noteworthy. They have excluded deceased citizens from electoral registers and allowed citizens to obtain and update documents and photographs free of charge. Additionally, based on actual registration, 196 844 IDPs were included in electoral registers for these elections according to their actual residence place. IDPs who did not have the status of internally displaced persons were given the opportunity to update their documents and be registered at their current address. The Public Service Development Agency provided this category of citizens with relevant information. In the first round, citizens had the opportunity to verify their inclusion on the electoral register and report inaccuracies to the Central Election Commission (CEC). On October 27, the CEC announced that 3 518 877 citizens had been included on the electoral register”. The ODIHR noted that the vast majority of stakeholders did not doubt the accuracy of the register.
The Election Observation Mission of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights also positively assessed the efforts of the Public Service Development Agency to update the electoral registers for the second round of presidential elections.
According to the report from the ODIHR, for the second round, the electoral register was updated to include citizens who had reached the age of 18, with identification data changes, and to exclude deceased citizens. The Central Election Commission (CEC) reported that 13 619 new citizens had joined the electoral register.
The OSCE ODIHR did not ignore allegations made by Georgian non-governmental organizations against the Public Service Development Agency on November 20, 2018 regarding an alleged attempt to print forged identity cards.
On November 20, several local election observance organizations jointly reported that the Public Service Development Agency had been printing forged identity cards. In response, the Prosecutor’s Office of Georgia initiated an investigation and issued a statement, raising questions about the evidence and considering the possibility of prosecuting representatives of public organizations for disseminating false information. These developments have increased tensions between civil society and government. At the final stage of the election process (on election day) no instances of the use of forged identity cards were recorded by the international election observance mission, local election observers or representatives of political parties participating in the election, according to the final report published by ODIHR regarding the 2018 presidential election in Georgia.
