Georgia Votes in High-Stakes Election Under Specter of Russian Interference

Ballot stuffing was among the violations reported on Saturday during Georgia's parliamentary elections, which is seen as a battle between Tbilisi's trajectory toward the EU and its return to Moscow's orbit.

Georgia's Central Election Commission closed a polling station in the southern city of Marneuli after footage emerged of votes being pushed into a ballot box, prompting an Interior Ministry investigation, Georgia media outlet SOVA reported.

In an update provided to Newsweek at 5.p.m local time on Saturday, the Georgian election monitoring group International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy said "multiple problematic incidents and violations were recorded throughout the country."

These included the violation of vote secrecy, restrictions on the rights of observers and physical violence against them, the mobilization of voters, and malfunctioning electronic devices.

Voters collecting their ballots on Election Day, October 26, in Tbilisi, Georgia. There have been widespread claims of voter fraud during the election. Diego Fedele/Getty Images

There were also reports of intimidation and unauthorized gatherings of people near the voting booths who were affiliated with the ruling Georgian Dream party.

Bidzina Ivanishvili founded Georgian Dream in 2012, and the party has been accused of backsliding on democracy. Ivanishvili has vowed to ban opposition parties, the biggest being United National Movement, if GD wins by a large enough margin.

Polls show that four out of every five Georgians support joining the EU, which made the Caucasus country a candidate last year. But the process was paused after the government passed a law that requires groups to register as "pursuing the interests of a foreign power" if they receive 20 percent of their funding from abroad, similar to Russian legislation.

The party Ivanishvili chairs has sought closer ties with Russia, with whom Georgia fought a brief war in 2008, after which the republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia unilaterally declared independence that was recognized by Moscow.

The news outlet Mtavari TV said on X, formerly Twitter, that its journalists had been attacked by the "thugs of Georgian Dream" who had gathered near the polling station on Saturday. Video posted on social media showed violent scuffles at polling stations.

Newsweek has contacted Georgian Dream for comment.

Opinion polls point to GD winning about a third of the vote, but four opposition groups believe they can combine forces to remove it from power. In the lead-up to the vote, there were reports of violence and obstruction of campaigning, mostly against opposition politicians, as claims abounded that Russia was interfering in the plebiscite.

"If the opposition suspects significant foul play in the vote, protests are likely, similar to demonstrations against the controversial Foreign Agent law in 2023 and 2024," Saif Islam, an associate at the geopolitical and cyber risk consultancy S-RM, told Newsweek.

He added that the U.S. had imposed sanctions on Georgian government officials since the foreign agent law was approved in May and that "further sanctions are possible if the elections are not deemed free and fair."

The BBC reported that Tina Bokuchava, the United National Movement's chairperson, said all credible polls put the opposition ahead, while the pro-Western President Salome Zourabichvili said on Saturday, "I voted for a new Georgia."