2018 Presidential Election: Facts of possible pressure and violence in ISFED's 3rd Interim Report

On October 25, the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) presented the third interim report of monitoring the 2018 presidential election of Georgia. The document covers the period of October 1 – 24, it also summarizes developments that began to unfold prior to October 1 but became known during the monitoring period. 

During the monitoring period ISFED identified: 13 cases of possible pressure and coercion; 5 cases of physical confrontation and violence; 7 cases of misuse of administrative resources; 4 cases of possible vote buying; 11 cases of interference with election campaigning; 14 cases of participation in campaigning in violation of law; 40 cases of damaging campaign materials. A case of suspicious donation and facts of resignation of officials in certain municipalities are also worthy of attention.

ISFED presented recommendations for improving the electoral environment:

• High level government officials should immediately stop pressuring and attacking NGOs and their leaders;

• Political parties should prevent their supporters from interfering with campaign activities of their opponents during meetings with public; in their interaction with voters they should avoid any actions that contain elements of vote buying; they should avoid any illegal calls and promises and urge their supporters not to destroy campaign materials of their opponents; they should refrain from mobilizing coordinators at polling stations and pressuring voters;

• Local self-government bodies should eliminate the practice of instructing civil servants and employees of non-profit (non-commercial) legal entities to collect the so-called “lists of supporters”, forcing civil servants to engage in campaigning and misusing administrative resources. They should abide by political neutrality, eliminate any possible instances of using administrative budgetary and human resources in favor of candidates; they should not allow campaigning by civil servants during working hours and provide their employees with information about duties and obligations of civil servants in the election process.

See the full report here: