On December 14, Civil Network OPORA celebrated its 16th birthday. Since 2007, almost 26,000 observers of our organization have joined the election monitoring. However, our activities are not limited to electoral processes. OPORA’s experts are drafting new bills, amending current electoral legislation, monitoring the work of the parliament, cooperating with various institutions to improve the openness of election data and educate voters, and protecting the voting rights of citizens. Here we want to tell you about our most successful activities this year.

Observation of the elections of MPs in 4 constituencies and the mayor of Kharkiv

On March 28, elections in constituencies No 50 (Donetsk oblast) and No 87 (Ivano-Frankivsk oblast) took place, and in autumn, on October 31, they were held in constituencies No 184 (Kherson oblast) and No 197 (Cherkasy oblast). Also, on October 31, the election of the mayor took place in Kharkiv. OPORA is the only organization in Ukraine that monitors all stages of the election process, including early campaigning before the official start of the election process. The organization also conducts a parallel vote tabulation based on a statistically sound sample of polling stations, which is used to track even well-hidden manipulations with numbers. 544 observers joined OPORA's observation in all these elections. And the long story in Kharkiv with the revealed falsifications is worth having its own chapter in the history of observation and struggle for democracy. Our NGO was the only one that defended the will of Kharkiv voters, because even the opposition candidates withdrew from this process. Read more about the history of falsifications in Kharkiv at the link.

Electoral reform

After the Electoral Code was adopted, OPORA's activities in the field of electoral legislation did not end. Experts of the organization joined the work of 9 groups and subgroups to improve various bills—from drafting legislation on referendums or political parties to improving the provisions of the Electoral Code. To prepare the legal framework, at the request of the Civil Network OPORA, the analysts of the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation conducted a focus group study entitled "Voters' Perceptions of Different Types of Ballots to Improve the Electoral Process" and a survey "The Attitude of Citizens to Voter Bribery".

In addition, this year OPORA has institutionalized its previous experience. In particular, three editions were published: “Report on Local Election Observation—2020”, “Report on the Results of the Survey on Women’s Participation in Local Elections—2020”, “Electoral Reform: A Decade-Long Road”. All of them are available online, and everyone can order free printed versions at the organization's bookstore. Also, the long-term OPORA’s expertise is an important part of the electoral reform, the main results of which were summed up at the forum "Electoral Reform: Evaluation through the Prism of Values, Political Rights, and Procedures Quality".

However, before the Christmas holidays, instead of gifts, civil society received behind-the-scenes talks and public statements from some politicians about the possibility of rolling back the electoral reform. This attempt to revise the achievements of the 10-year campaign to introduce a proportional electoral system with open lists shows the reversibility of any reform in Ukraine. Therefore, OPORA initiates a public process of organizing and conducting a nationwide public campaign to support the main achievements of electoral reform and invites everyone who shares our concerns to cooperate.

Security observers in Donbas

Back in 2020, the voting rights of residents of 18 communities in the Ukraine-controlled parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts were restricted. Local elections in these areas were not scheduled due to alleged security concerns. However, no criteria or public assessments of the situation in the region have been made, and all previous elections since 2015 took place there. Therefore, OPORA’s experts developed a monitoring methodology and started security monitoring of the communities left without elections. In addition, the analysts developed a text of the bill with clear criteria for determining the possibility or impossibility of holding elections and the procedure for how such a decision should be made. And the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe and the OSCE / ODIHR prepared a joint opinion on this bill, which generally welcomes the initiative and emphasizes in the main recommendations that any restrictions of voting rights should be proportionate and temporary.

Elections in the world

This year, a new section "Elections in the World" was added to our organization’s website, where we publish weekly materials on elections and referendums around the world. More than 70 materials were published in 2021. These materials provide an opportunity to understand what Ukraine looks like in the context of democracy compared to other countries around the world. Of course, we have a lot to improve and change for the better, but the situation in our country is not as terrible as, for example, in some neighboring countries.

Legislation on the referendums

On January 26, the parliament adopted the Law of Ukraine “On the All-Ukrainian Referendum” in the second reading, and on April 11 this bill entered into force. OPORA’s representatives actively participated in its development. They also joined a working group to draft the text of a bill on local referendums, which is about to receive an opinion from the Venice Commission, and then to be worked on in the parliament. After the two laws on referendums are adopted, one will be finally able to say that years after independence, the democracy norms provided by the Constitution became practical tools.

Monitoring of parliament and committees

Traditionally, every year OPORA monitors the distribution of subventions from the state budget for the social and economic development of individual territories and connects them with the districts of the majoritarian MPs. This year, the subventions were distributed three times (first, second, third), and trends show that the factors of social and economic development of communities were not the most important, unlike the principles of political expediency. At the same time, the analysts investigated the uneven distribution of subventions for infrastructure.

OPORA has prepared dozens of publications based on the results of monitoring the work of the Verkhovna Rada: 50 regional and 50 national materials on the work of MPs and parliamentary parties; monthly and quarterly reports on the work of MPs; reports on 2 years of work of the President and the Verkhovna Rada. OPORA also analyzed how the speaker of the parliament Dmytro Razumkov gave informal signals to the deputies, using certain phrases so that the decision received or did not receive 226 votes. Our article on the “market” of political parties even took second place in the open source journalistic story competition DataUP, organized by the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine in conjunction with the USAID / UKaid TAPAS Project Transparency and Accountability. OPORA has also developed an All-Ukrainian contact map of receptions of parliamentary parties and majoritarian MPs. As of December, it contains information on 546 receptions.

In addition, OPORA’s experts together with the Ministry of Digital Transformation prepared an educational mini-series "Administrative Resource and How to Counteract It". From April 2021, it was broadcast on the platform "Diia. Digital education”. Since then, more than 11,000 civil servants have watched the series and successfully passed the final test for the certificate.

Moreover, the organization studied the transparency of parliamentary committees, their inclusiveness and interaction with its stakeholders.

Political advertising and social network monitoring

OPORA’s experts are monitoring political advertising on social media and costs spent on it, as well as functioning of misinformation. During this year, they prepared 30 information materials and studies on the role of social networks. Moreover, they identified five networks of social media pages that conducted coordinated activities in the information field. Two of them were blocked by the Facebook administration. In addition, our analysts have developed methodologies to counter misinformation, as well as legislative changes to regulate campaigning on social networks.

Cooperation with National Agency on Corruption Prevention

This year, OPORA and NACP signed a Memorandum of Cooperation, which promotes more effective political finances monitoring, including using OPORA's tools for tracking political advertising on Facebook. Experts of the organization systematically raised the issue of non-transparent funding of online campaigns. This cooperation has already contributed to the opening of 5 criminal cases based on OPORA's materials on the violation of the procedure for financing the election campaign by the candidates.

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Also, we launched a new YouTube channel “OPORA Speaks", where we publish video blogs based on our most important materials. While it is gaining the audience, you can watch this year's interesting video projects on our old YouTube channel: "Q&A" (answers to common questions about e-voting, its different types, pros and cons, security concerns, experience around the world), "You know what?" (about social media campaigning and political advertising), "History of Ukrainian Democracy" (how all parliamentary elections have taken place since Ukraine’s independence), "Committee Chair" (about the work of parliamentary committees), "OPORA PodCast" (expert talks about everything about the election).

Thank you!

We are grateful to every observer who joined the OPORA’s election monitoring this year. We thank every expert of OPORA who participated in the development of legislative changes and other stages of democratic progress in our country. And, of course, all this would be impossible without the full support of partners: the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), the Eastern Europe Foundation. Therefore, we would like to thank all our partners for their contribution to our common goal.