In Mykolaiv at the polling station #480886 (district #129) one of the voters noticed a torn and crumpled ballots at the station's threshold. Commission members and the police were informed about the incident. There were also recorded similar incidents.
Citizen of Mykolaiv, sho found the damaged ballots, has already given his explanations to the police. Head of Mykolaiv city election commission Iryna Kosiakova, has just arrived at the station and reaffirmed that the ballots are damaged and invalidated it.
It is worth mentioning that the Head of the commission, who has no experience in organizing the election, was a bit lost and did not know how to act.
The same situation with a torn ballot repeated at the station #480895 (district #129). According to the Secretary of the commission Svitlana Lopatina, an elderly woman wanted to enter the voting booth together with her daughter. However, the commission members did not allow her to do so. The daughter did not like this, tore down the ballots and left the polling station.
One more incident happened at the station #480815 (district #130). Observers noticed that a man has dropped one of his ballots into the ballot box and put the other one into his pocket. And when he realized that other people noticed it tried to tear it. Commission members prevented him from this act, they took his ballot and filled in the protocol on the recognition of this ballot as a damaged or invalid. Police was called to the station and the man explained that in his ballot there was no option "Against all" and he had no possibility to put a tick in front of it. According to the statement of the Public Relation Group at Mykolaiv City Department of Ministry of Interior of Ukraine this incident was included to the Single register and verification is in process.
Olena Kabashyna
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 electoral violations through comprehensive civic action. Since March, OPORA conducts a wide observation campaign during snap Presidential election, interim Parliamentary elections (district #83), and special local elections. The organization cooperates with 175 long-term observers, who are watching the course of election campaign in all Ukrainian regions. On the Election Day on 25 May, 3,000 activists will join them to conduct the parallel vote tabulation, based on statistical sample.