The Central Election Commission (CEC) hosts the 10th Annual International Conference Of Election Administrations.

Giorgi Kalandarishvili, CEC’s Chairperson, Levan Ioseliani, Deputy Chairperson of Parliament of Georgia, David Hoffman, Deputy Director, United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Natalia Voutova, Head of Council of Europe Office in Georgia, made opening remarks at the event.

Meeting participants will be discussing during the two-day  the following topics: “Implementation of electronic technologies in the ELectorsl Processes and Disinformation and its Impacts on Electoral Processes” and share experience and opinions on the matter. As Giorgi Kalandarishvili noted during the opening of the event, sharing experience and good practice between election administrations, international organizations and experts supports effective cooperation as well as conduct of credible elections and generally the development of the democracy.

Conference participants discussed such important topics as perspectives of using electoral technologies in the electoral processes, sharing expertise and knowledge on challenges and positive aspects of using electoral technologies in the electoral processes, influence of disinformation in electoral process and tools/strategies to combat disinformation.

Giorgi Kalandarishvili, CEC Chairperson, delivered presentation titled “E-voting pilot project in Georgia, sharing Election Administration’s experience in utilizing electoral technologies in elections” and noted that Georgian EMB has piloted technologies since 2018 and therefore possesses considerable experience in using  voting, vote counting, and voter verification devices in electoral processes. Due to successful implementation of pilot projects, work is underway for increasing the scale of use of technologies in the electoral processes, according to Giorgi Kalandarishvili.

The second day of conference is dedicated to topics related to disinformation. Giorgi Sharabidze, CEC Deputy Chairperson, will deliver presentation “Georgian Election Administration’s experience, challenges and countermeasures against disinformation” to the meeting participants.

The Central Election Commission organized the international conference in cooperation with Council of Europe (CoE) and International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) and with financial support of USAID.

The conference is being held on 25-26 October and representatives of different EMBs, international organizations working on electoral topics, diplomatic corps accredited in Georgia and vendor companies oriented on electoral technologies, are in the attendance.

The meeting of Election Administrations is being held annually. The exception was 2020-2021 when as a result of COVID-pandemic the conference was not held and conduct of 10th annual event was possible only in 2022.