According to the rules of drama, if a rifle is hanging on the wall, it will fire. Electoral practice says, if ballots are stolen somewhere, they will be put in ballot boxes in some other place. The only possible exception is when large social resonance draws attention of the media, observers, and politicians. In result, the system hangs over and shifts to the passive phase, or ignores all the external factors and steers full steam ahead the goal.
According to the rules of drama, if a rifle is hanging on the wall, it will fire. Electoral practice says, if ballots are stolen somewhere, they will be put in ballot boxes in some other plac
On June 2, Mayoral race took place in Vasylkiv became the top-event on Ukrainian web pages, and drew even more attention than Turkish actions or floods in Europe. Citizens, which have spent weekends away whom the politics, television and web portals, must have wondered why at least somebody is talking about a city with 300 thousand of inhabitants. The history of last presidential, parliamentary, and local elections has proved that Vasylkiv, Bila Tserkva, and Irpin are electoral "black holes" in Kyiv oblast. Every time, candidates or political forces equipped themselves with deficiencies in legislation and manipulative instruments of influence on voting results. Members of territorial and district commissions impudently disregarded regulations, and the authorities, public prosecutor's office, and even the CEC didn't take any measures to punish violators. Therefore, it was quite difficult to miss the Election Day as a culmination of highly resonant election campaign and specifically organized election process.
Besides typical arsenal of methods and recorded violations, which could testify organization of carousel voting, voter bribery, and voting instead of old people, there was a specific incident: morning sitting of Precinct Election Commissions, which cannot be held earlier that 1 hour before the voting according to the Law, was held without observers and the media present. They were either not allowed to enter before 8am, or the safe wasn't opened in the presence of eyewitnesses, therefore, it was impossible to determine the integrity of seals. When I came to the polling station #321281 at 7:22am, commission members, who were to spend the next 21 hours with us in the same premises, were sitting as pioneers at desks with ballots, ready to deal with the voters. Question A: why to be anchored at the table, where you are going to work the next 14 hours in a row; Question B: why observers of only one block of candidates managed to get into the sitting?
Many incidents during the day showed that the commission is administered by a simple observer, not by a governing body; some commission members representing different candidates were relatives, friends, or colleagues. In general, the Commission was politically united, and there was no place for pluralism in thoughts and opinions. It's interesting, that nobody had seen the Law, and didn't look into it during the voting day, and especially during the vote count. Therefore, "allowed" or "not allowed" has become the legislative folklore, which can be often met during electoral campaigns. The voters, as well as the MPs, were coming like waves, mostly from the UDAR or the PRU. Only in my polling station, 7 MPs came with their own light and operators to greet everybody on the occasion of declaration of will, which, according to their words, cannot be clouded with any "counterrevolutionary attempts". Sometimes, they provoked the discussion with commission members.
OPORA conducted the parallel turnout tabulation with the help of special tally mechanical click counters, which ruled out a large human factor error. Everything was quite easy: when a voter throws ballot into the ballot box, observer clicks and "+1" adds to the total number. At around 12am, the parallel voter turnout became quite different from the official one. At the end of the voting day, this difference grew to almost 300 voters. It's quite difficult not to start doubting in your adequacy when such a difference is present. The present MPs from competing political forces started disputing about this issue and, naturally, observers were those blamed for provocations.
If not to go into details of all the violations of vote count procedures, connected to ignorance of the law by commission members and deliberate withdrawal of jurist of the PEC on this stage, as well as passivity of the Head, his Deputy and Secretary, which were sitting 3 meters away from the table with ballots, the most interesting part was when they started counting ballots in ballot boxes. The first results of vote count showed that 184 votes. The second - 172. It means, that there were 1,016 control coupons and 844 ballots in boxes. However, with such a low turnout, it's impossible not to notice almost 200 voters which came to the polling station, took their ballots, and went out of the station instead of into a polling booth. Besides that, the parallel turnout tabulation on this polling station showed similar inconsistency between official data of the commission and those provided by observers.
There were 1,016 control coupons and 844 ballots in boxes.
The most shocking was the fact that the commission took such inconsistency as normal, without any attempts to determine its cause. Besides that, one commission member counted signatures in voter lists herself, and gave the number of 1,016. Therefore, if ballots were not taken out by voters, and the number of control coupons and signatures is equal, than it's definitely a preparation to falsification.
Passivity of the PEC, when there was no possibility to organize ballot-box stuffing due to the attention of observers and the media, proves that the headquarters ruled to back off. The TEC had accepted the protocol with inconsistencies, because it was informed about a chosen tactic.
By the way, the same situation occurred at 3 more polling stations: #32185 – 115 ballots lost, #321280 – 97, and 321286 – a commission member tried to put 70 ballots with votes for the same candidate on the stage of vote count. We may suppose that the latter didn't receive instructions to quit the plan. Such synchronic activities in more than one fourth part of polling stations are more than revealing.
According to the parallel vote tabulation conducted by OPORA, the candidate nominated by the PRU had won with margin of 240 votes. However, the process requires measures taken by law-enforcement bodies in order to clarify the abovementioned facts. In other way, it casts doubts upon the election and proves criminal collusion between subjects. Objectively, it should be qualified as criminal attempt. If everything will be left as it is, nothing is going to be well in 5 problematic districts on the future Parliamentary elections.