With the first round of the presidential election just 10 days away, members of Ukraine’s Central Election Commission went to the Ukraina printing plant in Kyiv on March 21 to check on progress in printing the ballot papers for the vote.
The full ballot paper has the names of the 39 candidates still in the running for the post of president in alphabetical order. Each paper is 80 centimeters long — the longest ballot paper ever for a presidential election in Ukraine. If placed end-to-end, they would stretch 24,354 kilometers — the distance from Kyiv to Montevideo, Uruguay, Chairperson of the Central Election Commission of Ukraine Tetiana Slipachuk said during a briefing at the printing plant.
The ballots have 10 forms of protection against forgery, Slipachuk said.
Ninety percent of the ballots have been already printed, and the full print run is to be completed on March 24.
The total cost of the ballot papers amounted to Hr 165.5 million ($6.1 million).
