Outdated voter lists, destroyed polling stations and migration threaten Ukraine’s elections
Pravda Ukraine
The war, the migration of millions of Ukrainians and outdated voter registers threaten the conduct of elections in Ukraine, requiring complex and expensive solutions, according to the UP article Choose it! Rebranding Servant, Zelenskyy, Tymoshenko and Sponsors’ hesitations.
Source: an article by Ukrainska Pravda
Details: Ukrainska Pravda reported that Ukraine’s Central Election Commission (CEC) closed access to the voter register at the start of the full-scale invasion to protect the citizens’ personal data. However, in the nearly three years of war, the register has become significantly outdated: tens of thousands of citizens have died, 5-8 million Ukrainians have moved abroad, and another 4-5 million have been internally displaced.
In order to ensure the legality of elections, the CEC has to update millions of voters’ data, which would demand a significant amount of resources, time, and money.
Quote from the article: “According to a sealed study by the Council of Europe for Ukraine, which Ukrainska Pravda was able to access, only 1 in 16 Ukrainians living abroad is registered with the consulate, and therefore has formal grounds to vote in the elections.
How to reach out and get data on where the other 15 who are not registered [with the consulate] are remains a tough challenge.”
Details: The situation is further complicated by the small number of Ukrainian consulates abroad, which means that many Ukrainians effectively have no opportunity to vote under the current rules.
In addition, the premises where polling stations used to operate have been destroyed, both on the frontline and in the rest of the country, and it is unlikely that they will be rebuilt before the elections.
The article notes that one of the possible scenarios being discussed is the extension of the voting period. For example, the elections could last for a week instead of one day, allowing more voters to cast their ballots both in Ukraine and abroad. However, this option would require additional budgetary expenditures, as the costs related to the salaries of election commissions, security guards and others involved would increase significantly.
Voting by post would require significant costs to send millions of ballots from and to Ukraine. At the same time, according to a Council of Europe study, only 10% of Ukrainians trust postal voting.
Voting through Diia, Ukraine’s online government portal, is not possible because the service is run by the government, while the election service should be run exclusively by the CEC. It will take a substantial amount of time and money for the CEC to create its own voting service.
Quote from the article: “It is also impossible to buy a ready-made solution for online voting from another source, because no one in the world has ever held such a large-scale election digitally.
And this form of voting itself can become a problem rather than a solution: it greatly simplifies the process of ‘controlling’ bribed voters and can be used to coerce voters abroad or in the frontline areas.”
Details: The article also talks about the fact that the people who left Ukraine following the start of the full-scale invasion are not eligible to run for office under the current law. The law requires parliamentary candidates to have lived in Ukraine for five years before the election, while presidential candidates must have lived in Ukraine for 10 years prior to the election.
Sources told Ukrainska Pravda that a parliamentary committee claims that there is a complete consensus among MPs to not allow those who have left to run for the parliament.
Background:
- On 10 November 2023, a member of the Central Election Commission, Andrii Hevko, told the Ukrainska Pravda Talk Show that the CEC was working to restore the state voter register, but that elections were going to be held after the war ended.
- According to Hevko, it is important for the CEC to have an up-to-date voter list for the elections so that all citizens who have the right to vote can use it.
- On 30 September, the CEC shared decision No. 54 from 20 September 2024 on the resumption of the State Register of Voters, an automated information and communication system, when it comes to polling stations operating on a permanent basis.
- An all-Ukrainian survey conducted on 17-21 February 2024 by the Ukrainian sociological group Rating on behalf of the the Center for Insights in Survey Research of the International Republican Institute found that most Ukrainians do not support the idea of holding the next elections during the war – whether presidential, parliamentary or local.
- According to the survey, most respondents do not support the idea of holding presidential elections in Ukraine during the war: 67% (49% of respondents definitely oppose, another 18% rather oppose).
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