The ruling Georgian Dream party will end voting for Georgians abroad, a move the disputed Parliament Speaker, Shalva Papuashvili, said will “strengthen election resilience” against foreign interference, while critics fear it will effectively disenfranchise emigrants.
During a November 17 briefing, Shalva Papuashvili announced a major overhaul of the country’s Electoral Code, including a change that would require voting in parliamentary elections, like in local elections, to take place only inside Georgia’s borders.
Papuashvili claimed the change is constitutional with respect to the state’s obligation to guarantee the free expression of the voter’s will, which, he said, “also implies that this will must be expressed free from external interference.”
Claiming that elections worldwide have become “increasingly vulnerable to external interference,” and referring to votes in the U.S. and EU member states, Papuashvili said Georgia’s 2024 general elections “clearly showed how open and blatant foreign informational and political pressure on voters can be.”
“In this regard, there are, of course, particularly high risks of influence on non-resident citizens, who are under the impact of a foreign jurisdiction and political environment where the Georgian state cannot prevent interference,” he said.
Papuashvili argued that non-resident citizens face heightened risks of “information manipulation,” saying they rely largely on “filtered information” from the media and lack the “unfiltered information, which a person gets from personal interaction with society or the state.” The two sources, he said, can be “radically contradictory.”
As Papuashvili put it, “This creates a higher risk that a citizen who is physically detached from the country will make an uninformed choice.”
“Accordingly, establishing a rule that voting takes place only within Georgia increases the resilience of elections, reduces the influence of external actors, and ensures a more adequate, informed choice,” he said, claiming the proposed model “fully complies with international standards and is used in countries such as Ireland, Malta, Israel, and Armenia.”
Claiming that “nothing changes in the voting rights of citizens living abroad,” Papuashvili concluded, “The only requirement is to come to the homeland once every four years and cast a ballot in Georgia.”
The proposed changes have been swiftly criticized by the government critics.
“Depriving emigrants of the right to vote is equivalent to depriving them of their citizenship,” Vakhushti Menabde, a constitutionalist, wrote on Facebook, warning the move “will distance emigrants from their homeland even further.”
The move “runs counter to the principle of universal suffrage and is an extremely backward step both legally and politically,” Nino Dolidze, former head of the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED), a local election monitor, wrote on Facebook. “With this move, Georgian Dream is effectively excluding our citizens from participation in the life of the country.”
The announcement also comes amid continued demands from anti-government protesters for a rerun of the parliamentary elections.
The participation of emigrants in the 2024 parliamentary elections was one of the most contentious issues. Opposition parties, civil society groups, and then-President Salome Zurabishvili urged the ruling party to make it easier for emigrants to vote by opening more polling stations in smaller cities, noting that reaching existing polling sites, often hundreds of kilometers away, posed a major obstacle. The initiative, which went unanswered, sought to expand emigrant participation in the elections, amid widespread expectations that most of them would vote against Georgian Dream.
The Central Election Commission (CEC) ultimately opened 60 polling stations in 42 countries. An estimated more than one million Georgian citizens live abroad, a figure believed to be higher as many reside without legal status. Of the 95,910 voters officially registered abroad for the past general elections, only 34,574 were able to cast their ballots, with long lines in major cities such as Berlin and New York, and many reportedly unable to vote.
The vast majority of emigrants who were able to vote backed opposition parties, with official CEC results showing Georgian Dream winning only 13.5% of the emigrant vote. Observers noted that turnout could have been significantly higher had polling stations been located closer to voters’ places of residence, rather than requiring them to travel hundreds of kilometers to cast a ballot.
After the disputed elections, President Salome Zurabishvili appealed to the Constitutional Court, accusing Georgian Dream of violating ballot secrecy and universal suffrage in the October 26 vote. With respect to universal suffrage, her appeal focused directly on the limited access to voting for Georgians abroad. The Constitutional Court, however, rejected the appeal.
Also Read:
- 08/03/2025 – MFA: More than 1.5 Million Georgians Live Abroad
- 27/05/2024 – President Calls for ‘Full Mobilization’ of Diaspora in October Elections
- 29/03/2024 – President Criticizes MFA for Declining to Streamline Emigrant Voting
- 17/01/2024 – CEC 2024 Action Plan Criticized for Ignoring Emigrant Vote
- 28/11/2023 – Politicians Want to Bring More Georgians Abroad to Ballot Boxes in 2024
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