The final hours of the second round at polling stations in Kryvyi Rih were held in a calm atmosphere, with all electoral subjects generally sticking to legal procedures. All voters had the opportunity to vote freely, and the quarantine restrictions have not critically affect voters' ability to exercise active suffrage at polling stations. However, the complicated epidemic situation has surely had an impact on voters deciding to participate in the election or not. According to OPORA, voter turnout was only 34.6%, and polling stations were free from queues at their closure.
OPORA's observers state that 81.48% of polling stations at 08:00 PM were free from any violations that could cause the distortion of election outcomes. Some procedural violations occurred at 16.67% of PECs. Although they would not significantly impact election outcomes, these violations show us both typical problems in election commissions and established harmful voting practices.
Firstly, these are attempts to photograph ballots by voters, which occurred at 3.7% of polling stations. We have reasons to believe that in most cases, such violations resulted from the irresponsible attitude of voters themselves to legal procedures (i.e., taking a picture to remember or participate in a contest). However, even such motives must be properly verified and analyzed, given the hazard of possible controlled voting schemes. Commission members responded to such incidents adequately and stopped the illegal actions of voters. The statistics of such violations is similar to the trend of 29 November second round in Chernivtsi. Such cases also dominated in this time period then and were detected by 3.45% of PECs.
Voters demonstrating their intent to disclose how they voted by voting outside of a booth that ensures the voting secrecy or publicly showing their marked ballot is another widespread type of violation. The number of such cases decreased compared to previous hours, but they still occurred at 1.85% of PECs.
The most significant positive change was the absence of cases involving illegal issuance of ballots by commission members. Thus, there were no such violations from 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM, although they were the most frequent earlier in the day. Observers didn't notice any incidents of ballot-box stuffing.
In general, the administration process became more organized in the final hours of the second round, and the number of procedural violations of the law decreased. Thus, we have grounds to expect the better and proper implementation of election procedures at the counting stage, the active phase of which is ongoing.
OPORA has deployed observers to 60 polling stations in Kryvyi Rih, located evenly throughout the community. Before the observation, OPORA held 2 rounds of trainings and special Election Day simulations, involving possible situations and incidents. The observers were deployed based on random stratified sampling. The maximum margin of error for this report is below 10%. OPORA's statistically based observation is an independent activity, realized exclusively by OPORA, aimed to provide Independent information on the course of election.