Saakashvili Campaign HQ Denies ‘Merry-go-Round’ Practice

Opposition parties have accused the authorities of organizing what is popularly known as ‘merry-go-round’ voting, whereby an individual casts several ballots in different polling stations.

At separate press conferences, representatives of the New Rights and Labor parties and the nine-party opposition coalition claimed the authorities were ferrying supporters from one polling station to another. To deter possible multiple voting, voters are marked with a special ink at the polling stations. Tina Khidasheli from the nine-party opposition coalition, and Davit Saganelidze, Davit Gamkrelidze’s campaign manager, said that there were numerous cases when because of faulty voter marking ink detectors, it was not always possible to prevent multiple voting.

The authorities, the CEC, and the Saakashvili campaign HQ have all strongly denied the allegation. The Saakashvili campaign, however, confirmed that it had hired buses to help voters to get to polling stations.

“Our election campaign HQ has hired a number of means of transport… with only one goal: to help voters and to make it easier for them to get to polling stations,” Davit Bakradze, a spokesman for Saakashvili’s campaign, said. If any other political party had decides to do the same – to help voters to get to polling stations – we would have only welcomed it. This has nothing to do what is happing inside the polling station, so how voters get to polling stations – with buses or minibuses – has nothing to do with the electoral procedures inside the polling station. So our opponents should stop speculating on this issue.”

In a written statement, Eka Tkeshelashvili, the justice minister, who chairs a government inter-agency group dealing with possible violations during the election, said that “because of heavy snowfall and consequent difficult traffic conditions, the mayor of Tbilisi has mobilized the city’s bus system to ferry voters to their precincts free of charge.”