Local elections in Ukraine were not conducted in accordance with international standards and did not comply with good practices of election organization and conduct. OPORA bases its conclusion on long-term and short-term observation, the criteria and principles of democratic elections, as stated in documents of the Venice Commission, Copenhagen Committee the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Both Ukrainian domestic and international observation missions should take into account these criteria.
OPORA’s major findings are below:
1. Local election law passed too close to the election day and without public input.
The law that regulates the elections, according to international standards and practices proposed by the Venice Commission, should not be revised later than one year before the election day. Unfortunately, election laws in Ukraine have been revised and adopted right before the elections without discussion by civil society and the public, mainly with political motives.
2. Disproportionate representation in election commissions undermined public confidence in unbiased commissions.
The responsibilities for conducting democratic elections for participating OSCE member states, including Ukraine, demand the following: unbiased work of election commissions, which is ensured by their formation on a professional and politically-balanced basis. However, during the local election period, the election law led to a lack of balance in territorial (TECs) and precinct election commissions (PECs). A lack of clear criteria for appointing executive bodies led to groundless advantage of the governing party in executive bodies of election commissions.
3. Lack of training for election commission members set the stage for manipulation.
A norm of the international principles of the OSCE, that election commission members must be trained and educated, was violated. Because of this, lots of procedural problems occurred – not because of bad intentions, but because of lack of knowledge of PEC members. This created preconditions for third parties to manipulate the actions of some election commission members.
4. TEC’s selective registration of candidates or ignoring of the law created additional obstacles for candidates’ participation in the elections.
During the stage of registration of candidates, TECs created additional obstacles for certain candidates and parties. The majority of participants in the election process were able to successfully appeal the TEC decisions in court, but the TECs chose whether to follow the decision or not, or were delaying the registration. As a result, the candidates that were registered at the last moment did not have sufficient time to conduct their election campaign in the proper manner. Sometimes election commissions adopted decisions to ignore courts’ decisions. According to international standards, additional obstacles should not be created for the registration of individual candidates or parties, or grounds should be fair. In addition, the responsibilities of OSCE countries require that candidates can only be denied registration if the party which he or she is representing violates the constitution or his or her actions result in violence.
5. Failure by authorities and law enforcement bodies to react fully and promptly to threats and administrative pressure on candidates and commissioners created an atmosphere of public mistrust.
Unfortunately, authorities and law enforcement bodies did not react promptly and fully to reports on administrative resource use, threats or pressure on candidates, committing physical or moral violence against some of the election process actors. At the same time, the facts of physical attacks on candidates, destruction of offices or intimidation of participants of the election process were considered by the police as domestic conflicts which had no political reasons.
6. Insufficient oversight of ballot security and printing by election commissioners made the process open to forgery.
The problem of high-quality preparation of ballots and the lack of strict oversight of their printing deepened the public’s distrust of the electoral process in general. The election law does not require the presence of TEC members during ballot printing, which led to numerous conflicts because of the dissemination of information on extra ballots being printed. The Copenhagen Document clearly states that procedures should ensure reliable protection of ballots and other documents. However, ballots were passed to PECs mainly right from the printing house. The election law requires that only TECs should provide ballots to PECs. Also, the number of ballots for different levels of election often did not match. Thus, the preconditions for poorly controlled ballot distribution were created.
7. Poor election day organization did not ensure secrecy of the vote.
On the election day a number of organizational procedures were violated, among them noncompliance with the principles of the secrecy of the ballot. This created preconditions for influence on voters` choice, including campaigning in the voting premises by third parties.
8. Violations during vote counting and tabulation affects results in some constituencies.
Vote counting is of particularly concern in light of the tough and sometimes unhealthy competition among the election process actors, as well as unbalanced representation of political parties in commissions at various levels. OPORA has witnessed numerous cases in which individual PEC members took official PEC stamps out of the PEC location and verified protocols with the stamps at TECs, which is directly prohibited by the law. The law clearly stipulates that the Commission is a consensus body and separate actions by its individual members is a violation. In addition, after a recount at some polling stations, the overall result of voting was changed. For this reason, observers are concerned that either the first stage of counting at polling station was abused, or that abuse happened during the recount.
Civic Network OPORA is a nonpartisan, nongovernmental organization. OPORA’s 177 long-term observers (LTOs) observed the pre-election environment beginning September 11 across 24 oblasts and the Autonomous Region Crimea. On October 31, OPORA deployed 1428 short-term observers to join the LTOs. Among the STOs, 1003 were deployed to precinct election commissions (PECs) and 425 to territorial election commissions (TECs). OPORA will conclude its election observation after the official results are publicized.
OPORA will release a final report in the coming weeks that will detail OPORAs findings and also outline recommendations on improving the electoral process.