The Observers of the All-Ukrainian Organization “Committee of Voters of Ukraine” (CVU) and the Civil Network “OPORA” have noted a decrease in the number of violations occurring during the pre-election campaign.
Compared to the 2012 elections, the number of violations during the current pre-election campaign has decreased, and the nature of the violations has changed. Today, on October 23, 2014, OPORA’s analyst Olexandr Klyuzhev reported the following at the International Media Center in Kyiv.
Inadequate legislation continues to create problems, however, including the potential for manipulation, and OPORA considers that the current convocation of the Parliament has demonstrated inability to resolve the important issue of amending the electoral system. The majority lists on constituency level represents up to 90% of the electoral violations occur related to the existence of the majority component of the electoral system.
OPORA observers have recorded only approximately 1/3 of the number of violations of election legislation, compared to the Parliamentary elections in 2012. of which were related to the use of administrative resources. During this current election cycle, the main types of documented violations include election campaign violations (185) and cases of voter bribery (107). Meanwhile, there has been a dramatic decrease in the number of violations of standards for criminal interference, with only individual cases reported.
According to the CVU Chairman of the Board, Oleksiy Koshel, the electoral process has shown improvement since the highly unfair 2012 electoral campaign.
Positive developments in the electoral campaign include a noted decrease of corruption and criminal activity and only minimal misuse of administrative resources. Violations have been documented in all 225 districts. In 30 to 40 percent of these districts, mass violations have been reported, whereas an additional 10 to 15 percent of districts report significant violations. Because of strengthened penalty and enforcement, voter bribery all but stopped working as a system, according to Koshel.
