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In Georgia’s recent parliamentary elections, the decisive factor in the ruling Georgian Dream party’s victory was the use of “carousels”: a method of vote rigging in which voters cast their ballots at more than one polling station.

In this case, those involved were predominantly male, allowing the fraud to be detected through a gender-based study of data that the Georgian Central Election Commission (CEC) inadvertently provided to independent observers.

Unlike in Russia, outright ballot stuffing is impossible in Georgia, so the orchestrators of carousel voting had to obtain IDs or other identification numbers from real voters who had been paid not to turn up at the polls. Election analyst Roman Udot estimates that a fair vote would have resulted in the ruling party losing its majority in parliament. Anyone interested in checking The Insider’s work can download the data and verify the accuracy of the calculation using this interactive tool.

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Applying the methodology of renowned analyst Sergey Shpilkin to a pair of variables, The Insider was able to calculate the number of anomalous votes: approximately 300,000 in support of the Georgian Dream. The mathematical explanation for the anomaly is supported by eyewitness accounts of “carousel voting” by predominantly male groups.

Carousel organizers obtained genuine IDs — or at least their numbers — from real voters who had guaranteed they would not go to the polls. Carousel voters then used them to cast multiple ballots. The turnout figures showed no anomalies, as bribed ID holders did not come to the polling stations.

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The main evidence of vote rigging is found in the reported electorate’s gender imbalance, which skews decidedly male. This is a statistical anomaly. In the absence of electoral fraud, the average turnout among men and among women would be roughly the same.

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The CEC’s gender data immediately raised suspicions. Initially, the CEC reported that 961,751 women and 1,098,661 men had cast ballots — an incredible figure for a nation where women outnumber men by 200,000. In response to the reasonable surprise of local observers, the CEC, in a frantic attempt to cover up the scandal, hid the original data. However, the government body inadvertently issued a document with detailed data for each polling station. The second report attempted to mask the initial anomaly by adding 91,911 female voters and hiding 88,975 male voters, but analysts were not fooled.

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Such a ratio of male to female voters is inexplicable. If male and female voters showed the same level of electoral activity at each station (the same number of ballots cast per 100 registered voters of each gender), a total of 913,584 male voters would have voted nationwide, instead of the recorded 1,006,170. In short, the CEC’s revised data still shows an anomalous surplus of 92,586 male votes.

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The second most “hyperactive” male region of Georgia, Gori, […] showed a surplus of approximately 5,000 men. On Nov. 25, the Mtavari Arkhi TV channel broadcast the confession of a man called Gocha Chalauri, who shared how he and his associates repeatedly voted for Georgian Dream in the Oct. 26 elections:

"There were four of us in my car, all men, driving as part of a group of five vehicles. We traveled through Gori, from one village to another, and voted for Georgian Dream about 30 times each. In total, 120 or 130 cars like ours were driving around [the Gori region].”

Electoral fraud is a crime in Georgia, so Chalauri’s words should be taken seriously.

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According to Georgian journalists, voters who “rented out” their IDs or personal data promised not to show up at the polls for the recent election. Eyewitness accounts and testimonies from those who took part in the fraud, captured on camera by Pirveli, suggest that this [fraud] scheme was orchestrated by heads of local administrations and members of the Georgian Dream party.

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Each appearance of a “carousel” participant adds one vote for the Georgian Dream and likely subtracts one from the opposition while leaving voter turnout unchanged. As such, it renders fraud detection through traditional methods nearly impossible.

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Subtracting these 300,000 “carousel” votes both from Georgian Dream’s results and from the overall turnout would lower the party’s share from 54% to 46%, reducing their parliamentary seats from 89 to 77 — to a tipping point of a majority in the 150-seat parliament.

However, if there had been no “passport rentals,” and if the citizens who were paid to stay home had shown up to vote for the opposition, genuine voters would have contributed to the turnout — and thus to the total denominator. In that case, the ruling party’s percentage would have dropped even further, to 39%. In this scenario, Georgian Dream would have secured only 67 seats in parliament — and ceased to be the ruling party.

In reality, not all of those voters would have necessarily supported the opposition, but calculations based on official Central Election Commission data show that even a slight influx of average voters would have inevitably tipped the scales.