Brian Mefford: Ukraine’s fall elections matter more than you think
An elderly man leaves a voting booth to cast his ballot at a polling station during local elections in Chernihiv on July 26.
With less than 80 days before election day in Ukraine, mayoral races are already heating up. Parliament approved a new election law that does two things: Ukraine will use an open-list system and the country will hold runoffs for mayors in larger cities. These two features combined with the potential decentralization reforms being debated by parliament make the Oct. 25 local elections more important than previous ones.
