Polling station closed in southern Georgia during election following reported ballot stuffing
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Georgia's Central Election Commisssion closed a polling station on Oct. 26 in the southern city of Marneuli after video footage of ballot stuffing during the parliamentary election surfaced.
The Interior Ministry has also launched an investigation into the incident, Georgia media outlet SOVA reported.
The investigation has been launched under Article 164 of Georgia's criminal code, concerning the "falsification of elections, which provides for the deliberate falsification of election documents: voter lists, protocols, ballots, registration logs and control sheets and is punishable by up to two years of imprisonment."
Nino Lomjaria, a Georgian lawyer and former ombudswoman, reported earlier on Oct. 26 that an election observer was attacked while filming a ballot box being stuffed.
Giorgi Kalandarishvili, chairperson of Georgia's Central Election Committe, called the video "disturbing," and said that "if confirmed, the election administration will not allow such managed or manipulative incidents to undermine the many months of effort we have put into election day."
Parliamentary elections in Georgia are underway on Oct. 26 which will determine if the Moscow-friendly Georgian Dream party will remain in power.
Concerns about Georgia's democracy have reached a fever pitch after the ruling Georgian Dream party passed the foreign agents law, which requires organizations that receive foreign funding to be labeled as "foreign agents" and mirrors repressive Russian legislation used to crack down on Kremlin regime critics.
On Sept. 14, the de facto leader of the ruling Georgian Dream party, oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, as part of his party's larger trend of rapprochement with Russia declared that Georgia should "apologize" for Russia's 2008 war against the country.
