Georgia's Central Electoral Commission said on October 29 that it would recount ballots at five randomly selected polling stations in each of Georgia's 84 electoral districts after a disputed parliamentary election.
The polling stations have already been identified, and the results from those election precincts will be recounted, the commission said. While it did not specify when the recount results would be made public, it said that monitors had been invited to observe the process.
Official results following the election on October 26 gave the governing Georgian Dream party nearly 54 percent of the vote, but pro-Western opposition parties and Georgia's president have said the result was rigged.
President Salome Zurabishvili said the election was “stolen” with the help of Russia, claiming there was widespread ballot fraud.
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Official results showed Georgian Dream won huge margins of up to 90 percent in some rural areas but underperformed in Tbilisi and other large cities.
The European Union, NATO, and the United States have demanded a full investigation into reports of vote-buying, voter intimidation, and ballot stuffing raised by monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and other election monitors.
My Vote, a Georgian monitoring coalition, said it had uncovered evidence of "large-scale election fraud" confirmed by photographs, videos, and eyewitness testimonies from its observers.
It said it had logged over 900 reports of voting irregularities at over a third of polling stations across the country and was taking its findings to the electoral commission.
A rally on October 28 outside the Georgian parliament demanded a new election under international supervision and an investigation into the alleged vote rigging.
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Western countries have voiced concern about democratic backsliding by the Georgian Dream-led government, which earlier this year passed a controversial “foreign influence” law similar to Russia’s "foreign agent" law, as well as legislation curbing LGBT rights.
Zurabishvili has called on the West to pressure the ruling Georgian Dream party to reexamine the results of the election, which was seen as a crucial test of Georgia's democratic credentials.
"So much depends now on the reactions of our partners, how definite will be their reaction, how strong their pressure on the authorities, because I think that nobody can afford to lose Georgia to Russia in such a form," Zurabishvili said in an interview with RFE/RL.
SEE ALSO: Toomas Hendrik Ilves: 'There Has To Be A Price' For Alleged Election Rigging In GeorgiaThe CEC in a separate statement directed the Prosecutor-General’s Office to investigate Zurabishvili and others over their comments about alleged fraud. The statement said that after the announcement of the results the CEC "became the object of a special attack and groundless criticism."
Zurabishvili and representatives of some political parties participating in the elections have attacked the CEC “without justification and try to damage the reputation of the agency with baseless accusations,” the electoral commission said.