Gone are the days of straightforward claims of ballot-box stuffing. On January 5, Georgian voters had to navigate through a conflicting and fragmented pile of alleged irregularities ranging from police intimidation tactics to a supposed assassination plot against one presidential candidate.

Voting started at 8 o’clock on January 5 in 3, 511 precincts without incident, according to the Central Election Commission. Heavy snow led to the cancellation of voting for 130 voters registered at a polling station in the remote mountain hamlet of Shatili, near the border with Chechnya. As of 5 pm Tbilisi time (8am US EST), three hours before polls closed, overall voter turnout stood at 46.4 percent 3,405,475, the Commission stated.

Voting in separatist-controlled Abkhazia and South Ossetia did not take place. The CEC, though, claimed that the highest voter activity nationwide was recorded in two strips of Georgian-controlled territory that intersect with the separatist-controlled areas: in Abkhazia, 70.21 percent turnout was registered in the Upper Kodori Gorge; in South Ossetia, 76.85 percent turnout was recorded in the Liakhvi area.

The Upper Kodori Gorge numbers follow on the heels of promises by candidate and former President Mikheil Saakashvili that Abkhazia would return to complete Georgian control “within months.” Saakashvili had visited the area twice to campaign with local residents, promising a range of support and opening a ski slope.

In South Ossetia, the Liakhvi area is under the administration of Tbilisi-friendly Dmitri Sanakoyev, whose government was strongly backed by the Saakashvili administration.

The lowest numbers were recorded in the town of Kazbegi in eastern Georgia, on the Russian border, and Tsalka, in southern Georgia’s ethnic Azeri-dominated Kvemo Kartli region.

Turnout in the capital, where snow made traffic sluggish, was recorded at 42 percent.

Aside from the death by heart attack of one Tbilisi precinct election commission chairperson, opposition claims of “carousel” voting gained the most attention from local media, though the reports, as of early evening, had not yet been confirmed. At a briefing, Justice Minister Eka Tkeshelashvili, head of the Inter Agency Task Force Group, a group set up by the government to monitor the vote’s conduct, dismissed the allegations.

Violations reported by a group of four non-governmental election monitors (Transparency International Georgia, the Georgian Young Lawyers Association (GYLA), International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED), and New Generation, New Initiative) showed few consistent patterns.

[The group’s Media Center was partnered with the Open Society Georgia Foundation. EurasiaNet.org is published under the auspices of the Open Society Institute’s Central Eurasia Project in New York.]

In some precincts in Kutaisi, Georgia’s second largest city, and the Black Sea port of Poti, observers from the group were let in only after a lawyer’s intervention, according to ISFED. The most difficult situation reportedly took place in Tsalka in Kvemo Kartli where a precinct election commission chairperson refused to allow a registered ISFED observer to monitor the vote.

“We appealed to the CEC to respond to this fact, but after that the police chief of Tsalka region . . . even threatened the observer with physical abuse,” said ISFED program manager Eka Siradze-Delaunay. “Unfortunately, we are not able to observe this precinct.”

The group also reported serious violations in another ethnic-Azeri region, Marneuli, where unidentified individuals near the voting booths encouraged voters to vote for an unnamed candidate. The Georgian Young Lawyers Association states that it has received reports of similar activities in a suburb area of Tbilisi, Krtsanisi.

Claims of ballot-box-stuffing – once standard for post-Soviet elections – largely focused on one man who threw ballots into a voting box in Telavi, the central town of eastern Georgia’s Kakheti wine region. Criminal charges were later brought against the individual, who has been arrested, Justice Minister Tkeshelashvili said.

By midnight on January 5, watchdog group member GYLA reported that it had submitted 220 complaints to the Central Election Commission about irregularities.

Graver accusations against the government and the polling process came from opposition parties, which alleged rampant voter intimidation. [For details, see EurasiaNet’s January 5 election story: Election Atmosphere Generally Calm, But Opposition Claims Irregularities]

One person has been announced arrested for beating an activist from candidate Davit Gamkrelidze’s New Rights Party in the Samtskhe-Javakheti region, a predominantly ethnic Armenian area. An investigation into the incident is ongoing, according to Justice Minister Tkeshelashvili, who stressed that the individual does not represent a political party or work as a government official.

In Didube, a Tbilisi suburb, an activist supporting opposition candidate Levan Gachechiladze was reported as having assaulted a supporter of Saakashvili; Tkheshelashvili alleged that the dispute had been set off by an argument between the supporter and former State Minister for Conflict Resolution Goga Khaindrava, one of the leaders of the Gachechiladze campaign.

The sensational also occurred. Labor Party spokesperson Nestan Kirtadze claimed that an assassination attempt had been planned by the government against party leader and presidential candidate Shalva Natelashvili.

In response, Justice Minister Tkeshelashvili noted that Natelashvili had refused the offer of state security agents made to all presidential candidates.

The complaints from political parties are expected to be part of a drawn-out post-election struggle with the government. The four-member domestic watchdog group, however, described themselves as satisfied with the Central Election Commission’s response to the hundreds of appeals and complaints they have sent to election officials.

“Despite the fact that we observed several very serious violations in some precincts, overall the voting process is going peacefully,” New Generation New Initiative director Koka Ionatamishvili commented earlier in the day.