Only the parliamentary faction of the AUU “Batkivshchyna” submitted to the Presidential Administration of Ukraine a proposal on the appointment of a Central Election Commission after registration in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine of the Head of State on the appointment of members of the CEC June 3, 2016. This is mentioned in the response to the request of OPORA’s Electoral and Parliamentary Program Coordinator Olha Aivazovska.

Civil Network OPORA calls on the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and the VRU Committee on Judicial Policy and Justice to guarantee the preparation of draft Election Code (#3112-1) on the basis of openness and transparency standards, in line with the regulations, and with consideration of expert suggestions from non-governmental organizations.

OPORA's observers will provide an independent non-partisan observation of the first local elections in united territorial communities. The organization has deployed 69 long-term observers to the territorial communities, and short-term observers joined them right before the voting begins. The first local elections in 202 united territorial communities were held on 29 October 2017. The election process has officially started on 9 September in all Ukrainian oblasts without exception. Dnipropetro...

On 29 October 2017, the first elections in 201 united territorial communities will take place. The election process started on 9 September covering territorial communities in all oblasts of Ukraine. The largest number of united territorial community elections will take place in Dnipropetrovska (19) and Volynska (19) oblasts, while in both Zakarpatska and Mykolaivska oblasts, elections will take place in only one community.

The first local elections in united territorial communities proved that the law on local elections needs a complex improvement to guarantee the legal certainty of electoral procedures. Unequal application of the legislation by election commissions and other subjects of the election process did occur during the electoral process in 201 communities.

The major problem in the end of the voting day is still the issuance of ballots without passport verification, despite the percentage of such incidents is much lower, reaching only 3.3% compared to the first half of the election day. In most cases, OPORA's observers prevented the commitment of such criminal offenses. However, even though independent observers respond to such violations, the illegitimate issuance of ballot papers is tolerated by election commissions. Moreover, there were even ...

The voting in 201 united territorial communities has ended at 8:00 PM. The voter turnout is 48.2%.

Observers of Civil Network OPORA continue watching the voting process and the functioning of precinct election commissions in the first local elections in united territorial communities.  According to the data gathered by OPORA on the basis of statistically-based sampling as of 12:00 PM, the major violations detected by observers are attempts to issue ballots without passport verification. Thus, such incidents were detected at 7.4% of PECs (particularly in Sumy and Zhytomyr oblasts). Bal...