"They might make the wrong choice": ruling party wants to take away Georgians' right to vote abroad

Georgian citizens abroad will no longer be able to participate in elections. The ruling party is preparing new amendments to the Electoral Code, UNN reports with reference to "News Georgia".

Details

As the publication notes, according to one of the amendments, citizens will be able to vote in parliamentary elections "only within the state borders of Georgia." There will no longer be polling stations abroad.

To participate in the voting, one will have to come to the homeland.

One of the leaders of "Georgian Dream", Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili, stated that Georgian citizens abroad risk falling under the influence of a hostile foreign power and "making the wrong choice" during voting.

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"In the case of non-resident citizens, the possibilities of information manipulation are high… In an era of disinformation and false reports, information can be radically opposite. This circumstance increases the risk that a physically removed citizen will make an uninformed choice."

According to him, voting exclusively on the territory of Georgia will "increase the resilience of elections" and "reduce the influence of external forces."

Papuashvili noted that a number of countries do not open foreign polling stations and cited Armenia as an example.

The media have already noted that "Georgian Dream" fears a repeat of the Moldovan scenario, when Moldovan citizens living in the West played a significant role in the elections.

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The publication reminds that in 2024, the opposition won the parliamentary elections in Georgia at foreign polling stations by a large margin. The first place was taken by the "Coalition for Change", whose leaders are now in prison. But the number of votes at foreign polling stations was not so large as to affect the overall results of the voting. The opposition then accused the authorities of doing everything possible from an organizational point of view to prevent all interested Georgian citizens from voting in foreign countries. Activity abroad was unprecedented. Kilometre-long queues stood near the embassies and consular offices of Georgia throughout the day. Many emigrants traveled hundreds of kilometers to vote, but not all managed to do so before the polling stations closed.