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On October 27, 2013, Georgia had regular Presidential Elections, which were observed by 2 staff members of HCA Vanadzor, Vardine Grigoryan and Syuzanna Soghomonyan, via the financial support of the European Union.  The observation mission was being coordinated by Georgian International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED), with whom  HCA Vanadzor collaborates within the framework of the Europe Platform for Democratic Elections. Two representatives from the “Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Center” NGO of Azerbaijan also participated in the observation mission within the frames of the same project. 

During the short-term observation, on the Election Day, the staff members of HCA Vanadzor visited 9 polling stations, where they recorded a natural course of elections mainly without violations. In 2 of the polling stations they recorded violations which were reported to the Chairperson of the PEC and the mistakes were immediately corrected: in one case, the voters’ list numbers were incomplete on one of the registration desks, in the other case, one of the Commission members was not inking the hands of voters, this was also corrected. In all of the polling stations the observers recorded that the number of ballots received from the Central Electoral Commission was less than the number of voters on the main list. The PEC chairs informed that after the check-up of voters’ lists, the citizens permanently residing outside of Georgia were eliminated, so fewer ballots were provided to the Precinct Electoral Commissions based on the corrected data. Although the names of these citizens were included on the main voters’ list with special note, the separate list of permanently absent voters was also posted in the polling stations.

From the very beginning of the voting day, the Organization representatives met with various observers from European and American organizations at the polling stations, a group of whom had been also conducting observation mission since the pre-election campaign.  According to the scheduled agenda, at midday the observers visited the call center of the USA National Democratic Institute (NDI), where they got acquainted with the format of the observation mission conducted by them and the concerns and issues recorded up to the moment, which mainly related to the existence of several representatives of the same party and candidate in certain polling stations. HCA Vanadzor’s  representative informed that she had met with the observers from the International Republican Institute (IRI) in one of the polling stations and inquired what was the reason that the Armenian Elections were mainly observed by European institutions, whereas,  the representatives from 2 influential American institutes were present in Georgia. In response, the Head of the mission stated that the simplest answer would be that they received funding to carry out the observation in Georgia, whereas, no funds were provided either for Armenia or for Azerbaijan.  However, the availability of funds was conditioned by the fact that although they follow the course of events both in Armenia and Azerbaijan, they would be undoubtedly rejected if they applied to Azerbaijani authorities for observation permission, since they were going to be objective, while they would not conduct observation in Armenia, since they do not like their message being unheard. The head of the mission noted that they go to those countries which show the will to become democratic and where the Government express willingness to cooperate. Georgia is stepping over the path of democracy, while, they are all shocked by Armenia’s decision to join the Customs Union and they strongly believe that they have nothing to do there.

During the voting day, the observers also visited the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA). The organization’s chairman introduced them to their activities, the goals of the observation mission by pointing out that they did not participate in the parallel vote tabulation carried out by their partner organizations, since they were only interested in the procedural violations and not in the outcome of the elections, as they only dealt with cases of violation of legislative norms. The organization’s chairman also presented the organizational history and regulations, which are rather outstanding  in terms of constantly involving enrolment young and promising lawyers (90% out of the 400 observers conducting observation were lawyers), who continued their active involvement in public and political life in the future as well.

The observers also visited Transparency International – Georgia, where they were presented with the results of the observation mission conducted by the organization. In response to the question of HCA Vanadzor  representative regarding the observation during the pre-election campaign, TI representative mentioned that there were a number of cases of abuse of administrative resources in a few regions by the supporters of United National Movement and the Georgian Dream, however, there was a common understanding and trust that the violations were not of a systemic nature and they were not dictated by the ruling powers; those were mainly a result of bad command of the law and unawareness.

Overall, there was trust in society that the election outcome would reflect the voting results and the will of the citizens of Georgia.