Home > 2.1.1 Electoral commissions > GEORGIA - Joint Opinion on Amendments to the Election Code as of 8 January 2016
 
 
 
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Paragraph 22
 

The amendments are intended at implementing the Constitutional Court’s ruling according to which the electoral districts should be drawn to respect the principle of equal suffrage. Additionally, the amendments aim to address long-standing recommendations of the Venice Commission and the OSCE/ODIHR. Delimitation appears to be solely based on the number of voters. Deviations among the number of voters in constituencies that previously undermined the principle of equal suffrage have largely been addressed. However, the amendments do not provide a clear method for constituency delimitation, including a specific decision-making procedure for the CEC to decide on the boundaries of constituencies under its purview. Moreover, there lacks transparency on how the municipal districts previously used as a basis for delimiting the single-member constituencies were merged and split. Stakeholders also raised concerns over the process of disregarding other important considerations, such as existing municipal divisions as well as historical, geographical and demographic factors, and stated that the process could be used for obtaining short-term political objectives (gerrymandering).