On December 14, 2024, Mikheil
Kavelashvili became the president of Georgia, further cementing the Georgian Dream
Party’s grip on power at the expense of the sovereign state’s accession as a
semi-sovereign E.U. state. From the standpoint of representative democracy,
what a contrast with the U.S. state of Georgia. The Georgian Dream Party implicitly
conflated the qualitative difference between the U.S. and state-scale polities
by misappropriating the term, Electoral College, which elects the U.S.
President. There is a reason why that College does not apply at the state
level, yet in its haste to consolidate power in 2017, the Georgian Dream Party replaced
direct presidential elections with an Electoral College, which the party could
control. Sure enough, Kavelashvili was the only candidate in 2024, and he got the
votes of 224 of the 225 electors who were present for the vote.
The full essay is at "Democracy Breached."
