Central Election Commission Chairwomen Tamar Zhvania says the decrease in number of votes received by National Movement mayoral candidate Nika Melia was a mechanical mistake.
The National Movement filed a complaint in the Central Election Commission regarding the violations revealed by Transparency International - Georgia.
"Instead of, for example, 138 votes, they wrote 38. We appealed against it and, of course, we expect a proper reaction to it. Apart from that, we have big questions about voiding of an unprecedented number of ballots, in which I was supported," said Nika Melia.
The CEC Chairwoman regards the incident as a mechanical error and does not rule out such errors to be made with regard to other candidates too.
"I am very glad that we have such good monitors. In this particular case, there was a mechanical error. Maybe similar errors were made with regard to other candidates too," said Tamar Zhvania, adding that the Central Election Commission operators are checking the data and that no mechanical errors will be included in the final data.
Transparency International – Georgia organization has discovered several other violations too. Namely, Nika Melia was deprived of 100-plus votes in several polling stations, while another candidate Irma Inashvili has 0 votes instead of received 25 votes as per the Central Elections Commission protocol.
The NGO Transparency International believes that the Central Election Commission must thoroughly investigate these cases, determine the causes of the error and reflect them in the final statistics.

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