Georgian civil society and government actors are stepping up efforts to improve the accuracy of voters’ addresses for the 2012 parliamentary and 2013 presidential elections. This is a significant step towards a free and fair election cycle and fundamental in ensuring voters’ rights.

The project to fix the voter registry began with a pilot initiative to improve Georgia’s addressing system. This pilot was launched on March 1, 2011, and runs through the end of August 2011. It is being conducted in two districts of Tbilisi – old Tbilisi and Didube-Chugureti. A minimum of 150,000 individuals are expected to have their addresses updated or corrected in the database by August-end.

On June 9, IFES organized a midterm progress review of these efforts. Nineteen participants, including representatives from Georgia’s Civil Registry Agency, Central Election Commission, National Public Registry Agency and local government, among others, attended the review.

Nato Gagnidze, Director of the Innovations and Reforms Center (IRC), reported on the pilot’s achievements and gave recommendations on strategies and approaches for program activities during the remainder of the project. To date, more than 53,000 addresses have been connected with citizens. In addition, solutions to standardize the way addresses are corrected and recorded were found and implemented.

The meeting succeeded in bringing key stakeholder together to discuss the progress of the initiative as well as to identify improvements to the overall framework of addressing in Georgia.

As this pilot continues for the next 8 weeks, legislation to improve and regulate the process of updating of voters’ addresses will be drafted to ensure that the resulting gains become institutionalized within the Georgian system.

The IRC is conducting this pilot initiative from March 1 – August 31, 2011, through a subgrant under USAID’s Increased Trust in the Electoral Process (ITEP) program, implemented by IFES.