Foreign and domestic organizations are mobilizing an army of monitors to prevent fraud on election day. Yet despite the massive effort to ensure a fair election, by law, there is nothing that can be done to invalidate the presidential vote if tampering is uncovered.
Discrepancies in last year’s parliamentary election and this year’s dirty presidential campaign have led the nation’s voters to suspect that their ballots won’t be accurately counted.
According to various polls, about 70 percent of the population seem to think that a certain degree of fraud will occur on election day – and some presidential candidates are among them.
‘During the parliamentary elections, fraud reached 30 percent, this time it will be 10 percent,’ predicted Oleksandr Basylyuk, leader of the Slavic Party at a recent press conference.
Apart from Basylyuk, few people think that fraud affected more than one-half of 1 percent of the vote, but many analysts are convinced that at least one party got into parliament thanks to fraud.
Analysts say, however, that the chances of fraud on presidential election day is minimal. The bigger threat is the manipulation that might occur in the weeks leading up to the election. They say long-term manipulation of the press and other violations could potentially affect the results.
‘Only fools try to manipulate the results on the day of the election, and they only do it because they’re nervous,’ said Simon Osborn, head of the election monitoring mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Mykola Tomenko, director of the Institute of Politics, said that fraud is already underway on a serious scale, and little can be done to reduce it.
He said that because the election campaign has been murky and secretive, people expect direct manipulation of the results as well.
‘The flow of the election campaign is such that people are expecting fraud.’
Tomenko’s Institute of Politics released a study that classified the major types of long-term manipulation that could effect election results. His institute will continue to monitor such violations on a daily basis in October.
The most common violations are abuse of authority by government officials and their participation in election campaigns.
Tomenko’s report cites examples from official speeches by Prime Minister Valery Pustovoitenko, regional governors and other appointed officials who openly support President Leonid Kuchma.
The same report said foreign citizens also illegally participate in election campaigns; candidates print posters and leaflets that do not give all information about their origin; and misuse the results of opinion polls.
Biased election coverage is also a subject of concern for many international and domestic organizations.
‘All these violations will effect the results, and I am convinced that there’ll be minimum direct fraud,’ Tomenko said.
Just to make sure he is right, many parties and NGOs plan to monitor the elections closely on the actual election day.
The Committee of Voters of Ukraine, a major election watchdog, will send 15,000 of its non-partisan observers to polling stations across the country. This will cover almost a half of the total 33,000 polling stations.
Also, the Communist Party has vowed to have an observer at every single polling station on election day. And, the Kaniv-4 candidates promised to combine their effort in monitoring the election process and have at least one observer from the joint campaign at every polling station and territorial commission.
Also, the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the OSCE will have more than 200 observers scattered across the country, monitoring the election and vote-count.
Also, an OSCE representative will be staying in the Central Election Commission during election day and over night.
According to presidential election law, all observers are entitled to receive their own copy of the results at every polling station or territorial commission, which should make it easier to check the results.
Some of the candidates are planning to bring together their copies of documents from polling stations and calculate the results themselves.
Apart from the official results from the Central Election Commission, three other organizations plan to have their own vote-count.
Mykhailo Ryabets, head of the Central Election Commission, has said he will produce the first official preliminary results within 24 hours after the polling stations close.
Also, 12 candidates (everyone excluding Progressive Socialist Natalya Vitrenko, incumbent president Leonid Kuchma and Rukh leader Hennady Udovenko) have said they would set up an alternative vote-counting center in parliament on the night of the election.
Oleksandr Yelyashkevich, head of the Fair Elections Commission in parliament, will monitor this initiative, to which all press were promised free access.
Yelyashkevich told the Post that all copies of the election results will be collected in one room in parliament, and its results will be announced immediately after the arrival of these papers.
Also, Natalia Vitrenko announced she would also calculate votes separately, but failed to explain the method.
On top of this, the Committee of Voters of Ukraine will closely monitor a sample of 1,200 polling stations across Ukraine, including closed ones like prisons and hospitals, and calculate their own results on the basis of this sample. The margin of error will be 1 percent, the CVU claims.
‘We will announce our results at noon the next day,’ said Oleksy Lychkovah, regional coordinator for CVU.
But even if all four centers produce different results, it will make little difference.
The official CEC results will be considered good in any case because the law does not outline a procedure for invalidating the presidential election results on the basis that they were fraudulent.
Reports of organizations such as OSCE also will make little difference.
‘If somebody attempts to cheat in the election, the international community will take a very poor view of the country,’ Osborn promised.
He added that allegations of fraud during the election might prompt Ukraine’s ouster from the Council of Europe. He also cited examples when international aid had been cut off fully or partially in countries where elections were found to be seriously flawed. He didn’t seem to think that would happen in Ukraine.
The main types of indirect fraud
Participation of government officials in the election campaign and agitation
Participation of foreign citizens in the election campaign and agitation
Production of printed political advertisements without indication of the number of copies and responsible organizations
Publication of false or non-attributed sociological polling data
Publication/broadcasting by mass media of biased information about presidential candidates Source: Institute of politics
