HDIM side event on electoral law reforms in Eastern Europe

We are happy to invite you to our Side Event at the Human Dimension Implementation Meeting 2018 (HDIM) in Warsaw, which will take place on Monday, 10 September 2018 from 13:15-14:45.

The Side Event will focus on electoral reform in Eastern Europe, where changes to electoral laws are widely demanded by the citizen observers groups. Election experts see the majoritarian element of the mixed election systems as a factor promoting vote-buying and the misuse of administrative resources in elections – as long as corruption in politics persists and effective criminal liability for election falsification is lacking. In Ukraine, the coalition agreement of 2014 envisaged the transition to a proportional electoral system with open lists, but its approval is still critically dependent on political consensus and the political will of the president. The citizen observers demand the introduction of a new law on sanctions against election fraud and a new composition of the Central Election Commission. In 2017 Moldova adopted a mixed electoral system in a hurry, with limited discussions that merely simulated public consultations and without a consensus within the society. In Georgia, the ruling party Georgian Dream recently decided to introduce proportional representation only from 2024 on while the constitutional amendments were single-handedly and hastily adopted without broad consensus and support from the opposition. The electoral reform is underway in Armenia, where the civil society groups are actively involved in drawing the new electoral code.