Conclusions from E-Day by CVU

CVU’s Oleksii Koshel stated that in general, the election was fair and that there were no systemic violations that could affect the election results. “The election campaign was affected by the large use of negative campaigning but the conduct of the Election Day was of a high quality”, said Koshel. 

“In this election, the violation of the secrecy of the vote occurred on a mass scale”, noted CVU analyst Denis Rybachok. Among the major violations CVU indicates inaccurate voter lists and wide-spread mistakes by precinct election commissions in registering voters, illegal campaigning during the day of silence and E-Day.

Observers also recorded a low level of performance on different levels of election commissions, with some cases of commissions counting votes before the vote was officially over and several cases of ballots being given to voters without checking for proper identification.

Voter turnout was quite low in Transcarpathia, Chernivtsi and Kherson oblasts, which is believed to be due to the high number of labor migrants from these regions living abroad and the very small-scale political campaign run in these regions. Observers also recorded some cases of protest voting and ballot spoiling in Chernivtsi and Transcarpathia regions.

“For Ukrainians abroad, there were long queues to vote, regulatory barriers and other obstacles that inhibited their ability to vote, such as the financial cost to travel to polling stations repeatedly”, said Koshel. “There is a need to reform the voting system for Ukrainians living abroad, such as by increasing the number of polling stations or by allowing a postal vote.”

Unconfirmed bomb threats against polling stations and candidate headquarters in certain regions were not that wide-spread, however observers believe that this mechanism of disrupting the election may be used more actively in the second round of the election. In this election, polling stations worked continuously despite such cases of threats being made against polling stations.

The full statement can be found here: