State Voter Register maintenance bodies have confused personal information and quantitative data and undermined a basic principle of the Register – publicity.
The Civil Network OPORA has sent requests for information to Register maintenance bodies in Dnipropetrovsk oblast concerning the number of voters included to the Latest voters' lists, number of voters deleted from the Latest voters' lists due to the double inclusion, and number of voters included to the lists due to the court's decision. Three State Voter Register maintenance bodies have provided quick answers. However, such promptitude is not connected to providing full information, as long as all requests were refused.
Thus, the State Voter Register maintenance body of Synelnykove city council has confused personal information and quantitative data and refused to provide information, because "Personal Data of the State Voter Register may be used only in accordance with and for the purpose of the Law of Ukraine “On the State Register of Voters”". Another reason was that "preparation of such information would require the use of special means of the Register telecommunication data system by the State Voter Register maintenance body of Synelnykove city council, what is not provided by the Law of Ukraine “On the State Register of Voters”". However, such "special means" would require only some minutes to copy out a number of the last voter in the corresponding journal or electronic database. Another ridiculous reason of the refusal – is incompetence. "... data administrator, which doesn't possess and is not supposed to possess the requested information, according to his competence required by the law, has the right to refuse to provide requested information."
Such refusals were also sent by State Voter Register maintenance bodies of Tomakivsk and Pavlohrad Rayon State Administrations.
Therefore, State Voter Register maintenance bodies proved their "competence" only in providing refusals on information requests, paying no attention to their content and being not ashamed of asserting their incompetence.
According to the Article 5 of the Law of Ukraine “On Access to Public Information”, the information is to be provided after receiving an information request. Moreover, according to the Article 19 of the same law, the information may be requested no matter if it concerns the requester personally or not, and without any reasoning of such request.
According to the Article 3 (1) of the Law of Ukraine “On the State Register of Voters”, one of the basic principles of maintaining the Register is its publicity.
Reference:
Civic monitoring conducted by OPORA - is a type of network activity, aimed at impartial assessment of the preparation and conduct of elections, as well as preventing violations through comprehensive civic action. Professional monitoring at all stages of the election process indirectly influences the quality of the campaign. The public opinion, both foreign and domestic is formed through gathering and spreading of information among the target audience. From a strategic perspective public monitoring of elections focuses upon improving the system and certain procedures.