On 23-25 April, Civil Network OPORA holds its annual Election Nonconference #ElectionCamp17 in Kyiv.

Each voter, who participates in election, influences the selection of his representative in a community. However, the impact of election commissions is also significant. They count votes and fill in precinct protocols, which are used to establish election outcomes. Another question is, whether members of election commissions are well-qualified and adhere to law regulations when they prepare electoral documents. Judging from OPORA's experience in processing of protocols, election commissions m...

On Friday, 24 March, on an International conference “Guaranteeing the Voting Rights of IDPs in Ukraine”, representatives of leading non-governmental organizations, Ministry of Temporarily Occupied Territories and IDPs Affairs, the CEC and MPs discussed the ways of guaranteeing voting franchise for IDPs in Ukraine. International experts from Georgia and Bosnia and Herzegovinashared experience of their countries in regulation of IDPs' voting rights.

The Central Election Commission has satisfied OPORA's appeal concerning deployment of observers during the first election of village, settlement and city heads as well as the first elections to village, settlement and city councils of united territorial communities, scheduled for 30 April 2017.

According to the Civil Network OPORA's monitoring findings of 2015 local elections, there were 1559 violations reported.

Political rights of internally displaced persons, who comprise around 4% of Ukrainian electorate, are restricted, and they can't cast their votes both in local elections and in single-member districts in parliamentary elections. Such situation is against the non-discrimination principle, which guarantees equal rights, freedoms and opportunities, and hinders integration of IDPs into their new communities.

Civil Network OPORA together with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the National Police discussed improvement of law regulations ensuring adequate prosecution and accountability for electoral violations on the conference titled “Improving the legislative framework ensuring liability for electoral violations and the certainty of punishment”, which was held on Friday, 3 March.

Civil Network OPORA has prepared infographics to illustrate the liability for electoral crimes in 2015 local elections. It contains visualization of sentences imposed by courts, sort them per articles of Criminal Code and type of punishment, and make a portrait of an average offender.