The voting is to be held in 213 election districts (the whole Ukrainian territory besides the temporarily occupied territory of the AR Crimea and the city of Sevastopol) and the single overseas electoral district. At the same time, due to the aggression of the Russian Federation on Ukrainian territory and activities of illegal armed groups, some district election commissions faced significant complications or were even blocked, and the process of election administration was hindered in some raions of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts. Therefore, according to the CEC, districts #41, 42, 43, 44, 51, 54, 55, 56 and 61 in Donetsk oblast and districts #104, 105, 108, 109, 110 and 111in Luhansk oblast didn't receive ballot papers. Thus, elections won't be held in 9 districts of Donetsk oblast and 6 districts of Luhansk oblast on 26 October.
It should be mentioned that preparatory meetings of precinct election commissions are scheduled for 7:15 AM. The voting is to be held from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM. We would like to mention that the electoral legislation prohibits inclusion of voters in voter lists on the election day. On 26 October 2014, election commission can't make any changes in voter lists besides correction of errors and inconsistencies, even by the court ruling.
It's quite difficult to forecast the voter turnout, in spite of high electoral expectations. We remind that Ukraine had 57.98% voter turnout in 2012 parliamentary elections, 43.11% on 2007 early parliamentary elections, and 41.46% of 2006 parliamentary elections.
In comparison to 2012 parliamentary elections, 39% less international observers will observe the elections: 2,321 persons in total, including 304 from 21 foreign states and 2,017 from 20 international organizations.
190,283 voters used the opportunity of temporary change of voting location, 19,205 voters more than in presidential election held on 25 May 2014. The CEC provides the following numbers of individuals who changed their voting location in oblasts: Donetsk oblast – 21,704 persons; Dnipropetrovsk oblast – 15,040; Lviv oblast – 14,715; Kyiv city – 11,213; and Luhansk oblast – 11,119.
Starting from September, CN OPORA conducts a large-scale observation of early parliamentary elections in Ukraine. The organization deployed 213 long-term observers, who are watching the course of election campaign in all Ukrainian regions. In order to assess the quality of election process with a minimal margin of error, and to forecast maximally accurate election results, OPORA will apply the statistically-based quick count, or Parallel vote tabulation (PVT), conducted by more than 3000 activists of the OPORA on the voting day. Quick count techniques are stationary observation during the voting and counting process at the polling station, chosen by random selection. On 27 October at 11:30 AM in the UNIAN Information Agency (4 Khreshatyk St., Kyiv), OPORA will promulgate results of parallel vote tabulation, as well as statistics, and will analyze the influence on the most widespread violations reported during the election day on voting results.
It should be mentioned that information about violations reported during the election campaign and on the voting day are published by the OPORA on the Map of violations, in real-time: http://map.oporaua.org/