According to OPORA's observers deployed to a number of polling stations representative for the whole country, 17.7% of precinct election commissions in Ukraine started preparatory meetings earlier than 7:15 AM. As for the certain cities covered by OPORA's parallel vote tabulation, only Odesa (11.3%) and Dnipropetrovsk (11.5%) has smaller number of PECs which had started preparatory meetings too early, while Kharkiv has a percentage equal to nationwide. We would like to emphasize that according to the Law of Ukraine on Local Elections, PECs must hold their preparatory meetings not earlier than 45 minutes before the voting begins.
All the precinct election commissions in the country conducted preparatory meetings, and gathered quorum (more than half of total commission membership). At the same time, 6.5 % of election commissions didn't keep the minutes of their preparatory meetings. This percentage in Dnipropetrovsk reaches 8.5%. There were only some incidents when observers reported disappearance or lack of PEC seals.
According to the OPORA's data, more than 15.5% of polling stations opened earlier or later than time established by the legislation (8:00 AM on 25 October).
Only a little more than 1% of OPORA's observers have reported that PECs failed to provide them with opportunity to conduct a comprehensive observation of all election procedures on morning meetings and the beginning of voting process. Besides that, 3% of observers have reported that there are some organizational problems and that some actions of election commission members made impossible both their presence at polling stations and unimpeded observation.
Description of observation methodology
OPORA will conduct an integrated and innovative strategy of observer deployment to polling stations. OPORA is going to deploy 623 observers in accordance with representative sampling both nationwide and in every of four regions: West, Center, East and South. Thus, we'll be able to assess the quality of election day and compare results in the regions. Besides that, OPORA is going to a network of PVT observers covering all polling stations in three cities: Kharkiv, Odesa and Dnipropetrovsk. Thus, PVT observers will assess the quality of election process and secure oversight of election outcomes in election of city mayor and city council members. The observers are not going to count any documents by themselves or ask the voters about the choices they made. PVT is an independent observation methodology used by OPORA to provide unbiased information about accuracy of official results in mayoral and city council elections in three cities.
OPORA's observers at polling stations will provide information to Data Analysis Center in Kyiv through structured short text messages and phone calls. Data Analysis Center comprises 20 data operators, 10 critical incident operators and administrative office team. OPORA has developed complex software able to process reports from observers and send auto response based on artificial intellect algorithms. All the data received from observers is automatically tested for quality. If the quality is approved, the data is analyzed and included to observation results.