Election Code Amendment Cuts Deadline for Summarizing Results From 26 Days to 15 Days

Parliament will begin considering the planned amendments to the "Election Code" on November 6. The draft law prepared by Georgian Dream deputies will be reviewed by the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Committee on Regional Policy. Davit Matikashvili will present the draft to the committees.

One of the amendments concerns the procedure for appealing elections. Parties and observer organizations may be subject to specific conditions for appealing the CEC's summary protocol, without which the court will not accept the lawsuit for proceedings. A new article is being added to the law: a protocol may be appealed only if the data included in the CEC's summary protocol is not reflected, is incompletely reflected, or is incorrectly reflected in the precinct commissions' summary protocols. The same applies to the results of court decisions that have entered into legal force concerning violations of election legislation.

According to the draft, a lawsuit submitted in violation of these requirements will not be accepted for proceedings. If a lawsuit is nevertheless accepted, the court will consider only the circumstances specified and, if a violation is established, will order the CEC to correct the relevant data in its own protocol.

District election commissions will no longer be obliged to recount results at up to five randomly selected polling stations by no later than the sixth day after election day. The corresponding article will be removed from the code.

The procedure for summarizing results will also change. Final results of parliamentary, municipal council and mayoral elections will be summarized by the CEC instead of district commissions, and it will issue the summary protocol. The deadline for summarizing results is reduced from 26 days to 15 days: final results of parliamentary, Tbilisi and all municipal body elections must be summarized no later than the 15th day after election day.

The amendments also affect the deadlines for election subjects and candidates to withdraw candidacies. The powers of newly elected councils, their members and mayors will begin on the 9th day instead of the 14th day after publication of the summary protocol.

The deadline for submitting reports to the audit service on funds used from the appointment of elections until election day is also changing. A subject that receives the required number of votes under preliminary data will submit its report no later than the 5th day after election day. Under the current law, this deadline is the 12th day.

Some powers granted to the CEC and district commissions will be transferred to the chairpersons of the CEC and district commissions. The decision on registering or refusing to register observer organizations will be issued by the commission chairperson. The decision on appointing observers to the printing of ballots and summary protocols will also be issued by its chairperson instead of the CEC.

The initiators of the draft law are Georgian Dream deputies: Nodar Turdzeladze, Archil Gorduladze, Tornike Cheishvili, Davit Matikashvili, Aluda Gududuri and Irakli Shatakishvili.