“Election Administration works for 24 hours since calling elections on August 3 so that municipal elections are held impartially in a free and equal environment. Despite the short time, the administration managed and already for October 2 considered and implemented all the novelties and changes of election reform prescribed by the so-called April 19 Michel agreement. Assessments made by international organizations during the first and the second rounds of elections are a clear illustration of it”, - CEC’s Chairperson said at today’s briefing.

Giorgi Kalandarishvili talked about ballot recounts and noted, that one of the fundamental and significant novelties is when following the polling, within 6 days, mandatorily 5 polling stations revealed randomly from each electoral district should be recounted. District election commissions (DECs) fully complied with the rule of the law and following October 2, recounted 360 polling stations in the shortest possible period.

“I would like to underline that after the first round of elections, we recounted a total of 812 polling stations nationwide. It is the first and unprecedented case of ballot recounts of such scale in contemporary electoral history. It is worthwhile to note, that despite recounts of a large number of ballots, it did not affect the overall result.

Per requirement of the law, the election administration, of course, after the second round, also recounted the results of 201 polling stations in the shortest possible time. Data was slightly changed in some polling stations but did not affect the result of the election.

The recount process of ballots at DECs once again confirmed that the key goal of election administration is having a transparent and open electoral process and high trust towards the election results”, - said Giorgi Kalandarishvili.