Via IFES, the AP reports “a nearly complete vote count from Wednesday’s election indicates Saakashvili’s party will hold about 120 of the Parliament’s 150 seats.”

Last week I wrote that electoral “reforms” in Georgia were not actually reformist. While March legislation lowered the threshold for entering parliament from 7 to 5 percent, simultaneous decreases in the total number of seats and proportion of them elected under PR would be new hurdles for small parties. Reform, in other words, would benefit Saakashvili, not his opponents.

Now the main opposition party is threatening to boycott its mere 14 seats. Coverage of protests keeps pointing at fraud, but the electoral rules appear to have been the main source of opposition squeeze.

Glancing at preliminary results from the nominal tier, the ruling United National Movement is the clear leader in most districts. Yet it frequently has less than a majority, and other parties sometimes have sizable vote shares. In the list tier, the UNM is reported to have won 61 percent of votes.

Recall that one “reform” reduced the share of PR seats from 100 to 75. If one considers that no election was held under original provisions for the 150-member parliament, “reform” actually reduced the PR share from 150 of 235 seats at the 2004 election to 75 of 150 today.

The net effect of “reform” was less proportional representation and more first-past-the-post, regardless of what Saakashvili did to the PR threshold. That’s how he’s winning 80 percent of seats on 61 percent of votes.