Today, representatives of non-governmental organizations got acquainted with the pilot project of electronic vote counting at the meeting held at the Central Election Commission (CEC) of Georgia. The project is planned to be implemented during May 13, 2018 Sakrebulo By-elections and is being conducted for the research and process evaluation purposes; As it was highlighted at the meeting, the procedures defined by the election legislation will be applied for counting the official results. By running the pilot project, the Election Administration plans to find out how receptive Georgian voters and electoral stakeholders are towards the use of new technologies. The Election Administration aims at discussing the possibilities of introducing successful electoral technologies in Georgian electoral process.

Tamar Zhvania, CEC Chairperson presented the vote counting technologies and the objectives of the project to the meeting participants. Ms. Zhvania talked in detail about each procedure and afterward, representatives of NGO sector had an opportunity to check how the vote counting machine in practice functions. Commission members, heads of the CEC structural units and Training Centre Director attended the meeting.

The Election Administration, in the transitional period, was authorized to implement the activities of utilizing the electoral technologies in electoral processes before the Parliamentary Elections (Article 18516, Election Code of Georgia). Accordingly, relevant structural units of the CEC and the Training Centre elaborated the appropriate procedures to implement the pilot project.

Representatives of political parties participating in the May 13 Sakrebulo By-elections have already got acquainted with the pilot project.

Pilot project on electronic vote counting is being implemented in cooperation with the Delian Project, a non-profit organization based in Canada, oriented on electoral technologies and by the financial support of the Government of Canada.