In November, the Verkhovna Rada approved the law on the law on election of the people’s deputies. Changing election legislature for needs of the certain political force has already been practiced before. This technology is known as “election engineering” in science. This term means adjustment of election procedures for achieving interests of the ruling political elite. Main methods of “political engineering” are determination of election system, motivation of voters to relocate from one electoral districts to other, manipulations by the means of redistricting, choosing election commission membership, loyal to the ruling elite.

All these technologies are provided by the new law. The document provides possibility to change an electoral address and a place of voting 5 days before the lection day, what can be used for mass migration of voters from one constituency to another. The right of election commission formation is given to parliamentary factions. Nevertheless, the most important is introduction of the mixed election system, which will determine the order of converting votes into parliamentary seats.

It’s known, that the main target of parties on the elections is receiving certain amount of seats in a certain council. The mixed system gives equal opportunity to effectively reach the main goal in all regions. Thanks to proportional system, it’s possible to receive support of voters, sympathetic to a particular party or its leader. Majority system allows to obtain the necessary mandates by particular candidates – majoritarian.

Usually, the advantages of mixed electoral system are mostly used by the ruling parties. Everything is about the fact that they gain control over the most authoritative people in the region, which often are civil servants. For example, in a village school works very authoritative person. The teacher will obviously accept an offer of the village headman to participate in elections from his political force. He knows that there is no other job in the village, and the offer must be accepted. A similar principle is valid for all civil servants. They all are hostages of administrative system, which allows current government to control their subordinates.

The example of advantages of the mixed electoral system for the ruling party may be demonstrated by 2010 local elections. Civic network OPORA investigated how rules of seat allocation influenced voting results in 16 districts of the region. It turned out, that through the use of majority voting system, parties that had a low rating in the region, eventually received more votes.

According to the results of proportional component of elections, the People's Party received 16%. According to the majoritarian - 28%. In general, the party received 22% of seats in the council. However, all-Ukrainian Union “Fatherland" by the proportional component received 20%, and by majoritarian - 12%. In general it is 16% of the council.
According to the results of proportional component, the People's Party received 9,09%. By the results of majoritarian component of elections – 22,7%. All-Ukrainian Union “Fatherland" has won by the means of party rating - 27,3%. Majoritarian component was 18,2%.

The People’s Party received 23,8% by the majoritarian system, and by proportional – 9,52%. The party of regions received by the majoritarian component 23,8%, by the proportional component – 19%. All-Ukrainian Union “Fatherland" by the proportional component receives 23,8%, majoritarian – 14,3%.

In Rokytne regional council the People’s Party and the Party of Regions had won more than 80% of votes in single-mandate districts, and more than 55% by the proportional system. By the proportional system All-Ukrainian Union “Fatherland" received 18.75%.

The situation in big cities is something different. In majoritarian districts of Rivne oppositional candidates from All-Ukrainian Union “Fatherland" received 62,9% of votes. By the proportional constituent the party received 22,2% from all council mandates. The total number of seats received by this political force by both proportional and majoritarian systems is 42,5%.

This success may be explained by the fact that in big cities influential among the population people are entrepreneurs, artists – people that are not hostages of the administrative system. They may choose any political force without being afraid to lose their jobs.

The example of Rivne city council shows how the Party of Regions has won elections in unfavorable region by means of the majoritarian component. Thanks to the certain candidates it received 47,5% of mandates in single-mandate constituencies. More than 20% the same party received by the proportional component - 25%. In general it is 36.25% of the council mandates. All-Ukrainian Union “Fatherland”, which received the biggest number of votes by the proportional system (30%), received in general 17,5% of votes in majoritarian districts.

Bar charts which show the allocation of deputy mandates when using mixed election system on the 2010 local elections in Rivne region you can see HERE.

Thus, we confirm one more time that the government is not aimed on reforming election legislation by changing electoral system.

Andrii Tokarskyi, Anatolii Bondarchuk