1991

1991 Georgian independence referendum

Georgia votes to restore its state independence

The ballot did not ask voters to invent a new country. It asked them to restore the state declared independent on 26 May 1918.

31 March 1991: restoration, not creation

Georgia held a binding referendum on 31 March 1991 asking whether its state independence should be restored on the basis of the Act of Independence of 26 May 1918. A month earlier, on 28 February, the Supreme Council had decreed that the USSR-wide referendum on preserving a renewed union would not be held under Georgian authority.

From a registered electorate of 3,672,403, some 3,326,100 ballots were cast — a turnout of 90.57%. The recorded result was 3,295,493 affirmative votes and 16,917 negative; under Georgia's referendum law the proposal was deemed adopted.

Where the vote did not reach

Voting was not conducted in the Tskhinvali, Kornisi or Java districts, though some displaced or travelling voters from affected districts cast ballots elsewhere. Participation in Abkhazia was substantially lower than the national rate.

The commission recorded 474 voters from Java district casting ballots in Sachkhere, every one of them affirmative. Its detailed report also notes polling in two Ossetian-populated villages but excludes those totals, because the local commission had not been constituted according to law.

From mandate to act, nine days later

The Central Election Commission certified the proposal as adopted on 4 April and published detailed territorial results on 5 April. Former U.S. president Richard Nixon, privately visiting Georgia, had toured polling stations on referendum day.

On 9 April the Supreme Council relied on that mandate to adopt the Act of Restoration of State Independence of Georgia — the second anniversary of the Soviet army's deadly crackdown on demonstrators in Tbilisi.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 5 sources 2 audit passes Date corrected

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

Date corrected. The research places this at 1991-03-31.

What the sources leave uncertain

The best-supported event date is 31 March 1991, replacing the year-only date in the listing.
The English translation of the Central Election Commission record contains obvious transcription errors: one line says 'March 21,' and it gives 18,690 void ballots, while its own total and the scholarly data handbook support 31 March and 13,690 void ballots. Its heading, footer, the scheduling decree and all corroborating sources establish 31 March.
The percentages 99.08% and 99.49% are both defensible but use different denominators: all ballots cast versus valid yes/no votes.
Participation was geographically uneven, especially amid boycotts and conflict in parts of Abkhazia and South Ossetia; a national landslide should not be paraphrased as literal unanimity by every community.