The opposition coalition “Strong Georgia – Lelo” has filed a lawsuit with the Constitutional Court demanding the restoration of emigrants’ right to vote in elections.
According to party member Giorgi Sioridze, the ruling Georgian Dream party is losing support abroad, which is why it is attempting to disenfranchise emigrants.
“The ‘Strong Georgia – Lelo’ coalition is launching a legal fight to return the right to vote to our emigrants.
The 2024 parliamentary elections showed that at overseas polling stations—where the regime had no opportunity to resort to electoral manipulation, ‘carousel voting’, administrative resources, voter intimidation, and pressure—Georgian Dream received only 13%, suffering a total collapse and defeat.
In response, Georgian Dream has practically stripped our emigrants—hundreds of thousands of our compatriots—of their voting rights. Polling stations will no longer be opened abroad.
Particularly cynical was their response and message to our emigrants claiming that no one is allegedly taking away their right to vote, and that anyone can travel back on election day. The public understands perfectly well how detached from reality this is, as previously the problem lay precisely in the opening of an insufficient number of polling stations outside the country.
For years, we fought to involve more people abroad in the political process—so that citizens who make a colossal contribution to the economy could participate both in political life and in shaping political will.
Therefore, Georgian Dream has effectively stripped them of their suffrage, and on behalf of the coalition, I want to address our emigrants: join us, let us begin this fight together! The ‘Strong Georgia – Lelo’ coalition has worked for months on this constitutional lawsuit and prepared an impeccable legal justification, since this is not merely a regulatory amendment, but an unconstitutional act. This lawsuit will be published, and every emigrant will have the opportunity to officially become a party to the claim in the Constitutional Court, with our coalition’s qualified lawyers providing legal representation,” Sioridze stated.
As a reminder, in December 2025, parliament passed a new edition of the Election Code, under which Georgian citizens abroad will no longer be able to vote.
Georgian Dream claims that “this change helps prevent obstacles to the free expression of will abroad.”