An analysis of the Georgian elections shows that the pro-Russian ruling party, Georgian Dream, secured victory in part through ballot-stuffing. Voting charts, reviewed by independent election expert Roman Udot and programmer Levan Kvirkvelia, support this conclusion. Udot told The Insider that, in addition to traditional ballot-stuffing, votes cast for the opposition were redirected to the ruling party — a tactic experts call “relabeling.” Both ballot-stuffing and relabeling were particularly evident in rural areas, according to the charts.
What the charts show
Ballot-stuffing and vote relabeling on the first chart, which shows the voter turnout percentage juxtraposed with the results (as a percentage of all registered voters), where each point corresponds to a polling station, appear as a shifted “cloud,” explains Udot. Without violations, there would simply be a cloud — not a shift.
Ballot-stuffing increases both the turnout percentage and the result of the candidate for whom the ballots were stuffed, while the number of registered voters remains unchanged. Therefore, the candidate benefiting from the stuffing shifts sharply upward and to the right, while the victim of the fraud appears “flat.” Udot explains:
“For instance, say 100 ballots were stuffed in favor of the ruling party's candidate. The turnout increases by 100, and the candidate's result also goes up by 100. On the chart, this creates a 45-degree shift — 100 horizontally and 100 vertically. A 45-degree shift suggests that some form of ballot-stuffing occurred. Meanwhile, the victim of this manipulation doesn't gain anything; only the turnout increases. But their vote count doesn’t decrease either, so their percentage remains the same [relative to the electorate], since it's divided by the total number of registered voters. Let's say there were 1,000 registered voters, and that number stays the same. The number of votes for the candidate? Still the same. So, they move horizontally to the right, lying flat. Naturally, this leads to a loss, as the gap on the Y-axis widens.”
“When we separated rural areas from cities, we noticed that the rural areas were the ones moving sharply upward — higher and higher. They were shifting at an angle greater than 45 degrees. This indicates that not only ballot-stuffing was happening there, but also relabeling, meaning that votes were being transferred even more than they would have been with just ballot-stuffing, since votes were taken away from opposition parties. The opposition's numbers ended up falling because, as turnout increased, they had fewer and fewer votes. It looks quite mysterious.”
What is the “Russian tail”?
Roman Udot points out that on the charts of the Georgian elections, one can spot the so-called “Russian tail” — abnormally high turnout and a high vote share for the ruling party, indicating ballot-stuffing. The term originated during the 2011 Russian State Duma elections and is typically seen in countries where the democratic integrity of elections is questionable. The “Russian tail” has a tendency to mysteriously disappear in places where reforms have been implemented or fraud has been curbed. For example, such a change was even seen in Russia itself after large-scale protests when United Russia won through blatant electoral fraud.
“At that time, people saw all those ‘carousel voting’ schemes, were horrified, and took to the streets to protest. Even the authorities were surprised and decided it would be better to reduce the scale of the fraud for a while. After that, there were fair elections in Moscow for quite some time, up until the 2020 constitutional referendum. This led to an interesting development. That ‘tail,’ which had been depicted as a sign of high turnout and high percentages for the ruling party, just disappeared. We were previously told that this [tail] was due to working-class districts, where blue-collar workers supposedly loved the authorities and voted en masse. But it turned out that nobody was voting. The electoral commissions were just sitting there, making up the numbers, stuffing ballots, running carousel voting schemes — doing whatever they pleased. If you compare the data from the 2011 Duma elections and the 2012 presidential election, that tail simply vanished.
We can say the same about Armenia. I gave lectures there on how rigged elections look. The authorities used to claim, ‘You don’t understand, that’s just how people in the villages vote — high turnout, and they love the government.’ Then the ‘Velvet Revolution’ happened, and the election commissions didn't follow Pashinyan’s orders, so he came to power without fraud. As a result, the ‘tail’ immediately disappeared, like a dog’s tail falling off. Now, there are no more unusually high turnouts in the mountain regions. Before, they were just fabricating the numbers, reporting inflated figures to please their superiors, and taking advantage of the fact that no one went there to monitor.
Turnout rates of 75%, 80%, or 90% simply don't exist; this ‘tail’ isn't real. It only shows up in the Central Election Commission's numbers and reports. So, if something looks, walks, and quacks like a duck — but it’s happening in Georgia — we say, ‘Guys, you’ve got that tail too.’”
What happened next
The Gakharia — For Georgia party, which garnered just under 8% of the votes in the parliamentary elections according to the Central Election Commission, announced that it would not recognize the election results. Its leader, Giorgi Gakharia, declared that party members would renounce their mandates. He accused the winning party, Georgian Dream, of pressuring voters and called for an investigation, demanding “new — free, fair, and democratic elections.” Similar statements were made earlier by two other opposition parties that also secured seats in parliament: the United National Movement and the Coalition for Change.
David Khajishvili, a member of the Georgian parliament from the United National Movement, told The Insider that his party’s goal is to annul the election results and hold new elections. On the evening of October 28, a protest took place outside parliament in Tbilisi, where a laser projection displayed the word “Stolen” on the building’s facade. Addressing the crowd, President Salome Zourabichvili stated, “Those of you here, you did not lose the elections. Your votes were stolen, and they are trying to steal your future! No one has the right to do this, and you will not allow it!”