Last weekʼs Georgian parliamentary vote shows weird math that dont add up‚ say US experts. The ruling Georgian Dream party claims a big win but something looks off-base in the counting
Two well-known polling firms – Edison Research and HarrisX – found major red flags in the numbers: theres a 13-point gap between exit polls and official counts (which is way too big to be normal). In some far-off places the ruling party got super-high scores – like 80-90% which seems fishy
The election was super-important for this ex-Soviet country; it was about picking between two paths: getting closer to Europe or staying in Russias orbit. The ruling Bidzina Ivanishviliʼs party (which got 54% in official count) says everything was fair-and-square but international watchers saw some not-cool stuff going on:
- ballot-box stuffing
- voters getting pressured
- people getting paid for votes
In one place called Marneuli (a town with lots of ethnic-Azeris) exit polls showed Georgian Dream at 40% but somehow they ended up with double that in official results; local officials already confirmed some funny-business happened there
The countrys pro-West president says its all fake and people arent happy – thousands showed up in the streets of Tbilisi to say so. More street action is coming up next week; meanwhile state prosecutors (after getting nudged by Western countries) started looking into whether someone messed with the vote count