October Surprise 2016 - octobersurprise2016.org
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Polls opened across Georgia at 08:00 on October 4 for the municipal elections, which are taking place amid a partial opposition boycott and a mass protest rally scheduled to run alongside the vote.
The local elections are conducted under scant credible observation, with continued repression by Georgian Dream authorities, jailings of protesters and opposition members, and a crackdown on independent media and watchdogs.
The vote comes approximately a year after the disputed parliamentary elections, which led to the opposition’s parliamentary boycott due to allegations of fraud, and just 10 months into the non-stop protests that erupted in response to Georgian Dream’s announcement to halt EU integration. A parallel mass rally has been scheduled at 4 pm at the parliament in Tbilisi with the stated aim of “peacefully overthrowing” the Georgian Dream government.
3,513,818 Georgian citizens are eligible to vote in 3,061 polling stations, according to the Central Election Commission (CEC). The number includes 47,000 first-time voters.
Voting will be conducted electronically in 2,284 out of 3,061 polling stations nationwide, covering 3,130,348 voters. The voters in the remaining 777 precincts will be casting their ballots in the traditional procedure, including in 10 in the penitentiary facilities. Electronic voting, mass-introduced last year, involves the use of special hardware and software within the precincts for verifying voters and counting votes.
CEC expects to offer preliminary results based on electronic precincts in 1-2 hours after the polls close at 8 pm. The final results are expected later, after all ballots have been recounted by hand.
12 political parties have registered to take part in the vote, down from 43 in the 2021 local vote. Nine mainstream opposition parties said they are boycotting the elections.
Georgians will be voting across three separate lists: mayoral races in 64 municipalities, including 5 self-governing cities, majoritarian contests in local self-governing councils (Sakrebulos), and proportional party lists for Sakrebulos. They will be electing 2,058 Sakrebulo members, both majoritarians and from proportional party lists.
In Tbilisi, nine candidates have joined the mayoral race, while 112 candidates are running for the mayor’s office in the remaining 63 municipalities. The ruling Georgian Dream party runs unchallenged in nearly half of the mayoral races.
28 international and 27 local missions have registered to observe this year’s municipal vote, with traditional credible watchdogs – including OSCE/ODIHR, International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED), Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA), and Transparency International (TI) Georgia absent from the list.
Follow our live blog for election-day updates.
For more context, read our backgrounders:
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