The presidential elections in Ukraine which are to be held May 25 will be held on new terms. Law of Ukraine No. 879-VII «On the Amendment of the Law of Ukraine 'On the Election of the President of Ukraine' and Some Other Legislative Acts for the Technical and Legal Improvement of the Election Process» has been passed by the Parliament of Ukraine and signed by Acting President of Ukraine Oleksandr Turchynov.
In Article 84 of the law, in particular, a change has been introduced which reads: «The central electoral commission must determine the result of the election of the President of Ukraine regardless of the number of polling stations and electoral districts at which or within the bounds of which voting was not organized and conducted…»
Article 83 of the new law, in turn, obligates district electoral commissions to «determine the result of voting within the bounds of the territorial electoral district regardless of the number of polling stations in the district in question at which voting was not organized and conducted on election day».
Thus, even if only 5% of the citizens of Ukraine vote in the election and voting does not take place at the majority of polling stations in several regions with populations of several million, the elections will still be recognized as valid.
Even if no voting takes place at all in entire regions, the abovementioned Article 84 states: «If voting within the boundaries of individual territorial districts was not organized and conducted in accordance with the requirements of Articles 76 and 77 of this law, the results of voting on the day of the election of the President of Ukraine are to be determined based on the results determined in other electoral districts». That is, if elections do not take place, for example, in the Donetsk region, the declaration of will of the voters of the Lvov region could be recognized as the voting result in the Donetsk region. The great variety of political sympathies among Ukraine residents is not accounted for in the law. Can you imagine an election to the European Parliament, for example, which, if the residents of Germany were to ignore it, would be recognized as valid and in which the results of the voting in Greece or Lithuania would be counted as the declaration of will of the Germans?
It is obvious that the new Ukrainian government introduced such antidemocratic measures out of fear that a large number of Ukrainian voters who did not agree with the rise to power of extreme nationalist forces would boycott the election. At the same time, Ukraine, which is a member of the Council of Europe, is bound by all the obligations provided for in the standards established by this organization for the holding of elections, in particular the «Code of Good Practice in Electoral Matters», approved by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe during the first part of the 2003 session.
One of the principles for holding elections provided for in this document is equal suffrage, which among other things means a clear and balanced distribution of seats between constituencies. Although the document is referring to the borders forming electoral districts, the absence of real results of the declaration of will of the voters in some of these districts would be a fundamental violation of the principle of equal suffrage, since when determining the election results the position of a large number of voters could not be considered. And their will would be replaced by the will of residents of other regions, that is, one voter would essentially have several votes.
Furthermore, fundamental changes in the principles and rules for holding elections right before the vote are in direct violation of paragraph 2b of part II of the Code, which states that «The fundamental elements of electoral law…should not be open to amendment less than one year before an election, or should be written in the constitution or at a level higher than ordinary law».
Elaborating on this paragraph, the Venice Commission states in its Explanatory Report, adopted at the 52nd Plenary Session October 18-19, 2002, that «stability of some of the more specific rules of electoral law, especially those covering the electoral system per se, the composition of electoral commissions and the drawing of constituency boundaries» must be protected, as «changes will seem to be dictated by immediate party political interests «and «voters may conclude… that electoral law is simply a tool in the hands of the powerful, and that their own votes have little weight in deciding the results of elections».
There is one more norm in the new Ukrainian election law which could cast doubt on the validity of the election results. Article 84 of the law also states that «non-signing or refusal to sign the report by individual members of the Central Electoral Commission has no legal consequences for the validity of the report». The number of signatures necessary is not regulated in any way. Formally, a report could be recognized as valid even if only two or three members of the commission appointed by the government sign it.
This directly contradicts paragraph 3.1h of the Code, which states that «It is desirable that electoral commissions take decisions by a qualified majority or by consensus».
The legislative changes adopted by the new Ukrainian government in violation of European standards for holding elections cannot but lead to the gross distortion of the will of voters. Such results will not reflect the entire gamut of the population's political preferences. Large segments of Ukrainian citizens will thus be excluded from the political process…
Elections which can be recognized as valid based solely on voting on the Kiev Maidan cannot be considered democratic.
