Int’l Watchdog Detects Signs of Alleged Wide-Scale Elections Rigging
The authoritative democracy watchdog Europe Elects, which ensures a centralized resource for electoral insights, published its findings regarding the alleged rigging of the October 26 elections in Georgia, which show that “on top of the electoral integrity violations reported by observers, the widespread tampering in favor of the government is visible also in the detailed official results counts.”
The election results were denounced by local election observers and the opposition as widely rigged. President also rejected the results of the elections, saying the elections were “a total falsification” with the use of modern technologies “to whitewash” them, a “Russian special operation” and a” new type of hybrid warfare waged against our people”
Europe Elects says that using publicly available data from the Central Election Commission of Georgia, its analysis was able to independently reproduce the signs of fraud.
The organization says that “the analysis of the election data shows that the biggest telltale sign of tampering with the results is implausible deviations from normal distribution when it comes to voting shares of a relevant party.” It further notes that “In more rural municipalities, the governing GD raked up disturbingly high vote shares much in excess of the expected.”
Europe Elects notes that “in the 2020 Georgian parliamentary election, deviations from a normal distribution were observed somewhat less when it comes to GD, indicating increased tampering with the results in a closely contested election in 2024.”
Yet, the distribution of vote shares is not the only variable that can be employed to uncover indications of fraud. Another important sign, also with Georgia’s case, is the so-called comet tail of increasingly higher vote shares, leading to a higher vote count peak than expected.
The name of such a phenomenon “Russian tail” comes from Russian vote distributions where the custom is blatant and well observed, whereby increasing turnout leads to increasing vote share.
In the case of Georgian Dream results the watchdog notices a “similar drift of progressively higher vote shares in election stations outside the ‘honest cloud’ of more legitimate and plausible clustering. Which likewise leads to unconvincingly high peak, much in excess that are observed elsewhere.”
The watchdog says that the final indication in their analysis is “the so-called Sobyanin-Sukhovolski method”, which is used in analyzing electoral results for anomalies. It notes that in several polling stations GD got nearly all of the registered votes, “much higher than the supporting share of population would indicate.”
The analysis further illustrates that: “If in normal legitimate voting a party has 40% support within the electorate, it receives ~400 votes from 1000 voters on, leading to stations track the trend line without too much divergence. This takes place in the capital Tbilisi and other urban municipalities.”
The picture however changes “when moving onto the more rural and traditionally government-voting municipalities: GD receives nearly 100% of the amount that is registered for the station in several dozens of instances, the data points close to the black line of 100% of registered voters.”
Noting that the organization has followed and analyzed hundreds of elections during the past decade, Europe Elects concludes “it is safe to conclude that the 2024 Georgian parliamentary election exhibits clear fudging with the results, on top of the electoral violations reported elsewhere by observers.”
The crucial Parliamentary elections took place on October 26 and were largely seen as geopolitical elections by the opposition, with Georgia either choosing its future with the EU of falling into the Russian sphere of influence. The ruling Georgian Dream framed it largely as peace vs war elections. According to the official results by the Central Election Commission, as a result of the elections the Georgian Dream party won with 53.9% of the vote. The Coalition for Change received 11.03 percent, the United National Movement 10.16 percent, Strong Georgia 8.81 percent and For Georgia 7.77 percent. The Georgian Dream thus won 89 out of 150 Parliament seats. Voter turnout was 58.94 percent.
Also Read:
- 27/07/2024 – My Vote Speaks of ‘Large Scale’ Rigging Scheme as Preliminary Results Give Lead to GD
- 27/10/2024 – Helsinki Commission Chair Calls on State Department to Investigate Allegations of Fraud in Georgian Elections
- 27/20/2024 – Election 2024 Results: Interactive Map