Procedure for appointing and terminating the term of office of CEC members by parties

1. Seven members of the CEC shall be appointed by parties as defined in this article.

2. Each member of the CEC shall be appointed by the political unions that receive funds from the State Budget according to Article 30 of the Organic Law of Georgia on Political Unions of Citizens.

3. If the number of the parties under the second paragraph of this article is more than 7, each CEC member shall be appointed by 7 parties receiving more funding than others. If several parties have equal funding, the party having the best results in the election shall have priority. If parties united in one electoral bloc receive equal funding, the party being ahead in the list of bloc members shall have priority.

4. If the number of the parties under the second paragraph of this article is less than 7, it shall be filled up to 7 with the subsequent parties having the best results (based on the descending order of the votes received), which ran in the election independently or were united in an electoral bloc and were on the top of the list of bloc members (if the party named first refuses to appoint a commission member, that right shall be given to the second party, etc.), provided that they receive more than 3% of votes participating in the election. If the number of parties authorised to appoint commission members is not filled up to 7 after those procedures, all parties referred to in this paragraph, based on their election results, shall have the right to appoint one more commission member in order to fill up the number of members to 7.

5. If funding of any party from the State Budget of Georgia terminates or if another party receives more funding than the former, the powers of the commission member appointed by that party shall cease on the day following the day of issuance of the ordinance of the chairperson of the CEC, and the number of commission members shall be filled up to 7 with representative(s) of the party (parties) receiving more funding. If there is no such party or if that (those) party (parties) refuse(s) to appoint a commission member, the procedure defined in the sixth paragraph of this article shall be applied.

6. A party may withdraw the CEC member appointed by it. No such withdrawal shall take place during the period from the day of calling elections to the day of summing up the final election results. A party may appoint a new CEC member within the above period only in the case of resignation or death of the appointed member.