Asked by sociologists about how they plan to vote, millions of Ukrainians could simply respond: “I can’t travel that far.”
Fearing
massive voter fraud, the Central Election Commission on Sept. 22 has curtailed voting
outside one’s place of registration. The restrictions could deprive millions of
their electoral rights. At present, people can only cast ballots in the
district they are registered in, unless they go through an onerous
re-registration procedure.
The
authorities decided to limit voting to a person’s home constituency, claiming
they were worried by a recent case in which students of Irpin Tax Academy took
out massive amounts of absentee ballots aiming to vote for their university
president Perto Melnyk.
So-called
election “merry-go-rounds” or electoral tours — when masses would vote
multiple times in multiple polling stations — were arguably the biggest source
of falsifications during the 2004 presidential elections, which ended in the
Orange Revolution.
Such fraud,
however, was organized by the political parties themselves, not
over-enthusiastic voters.
So should
people now be punished for the politicians’ fraudulent behavior?
Olga
Aivazovska from the OPORA election watchdog believes this rule is a “violation
of voter’s rights.”
“This is
not an appropriate way to fight violations by candidates, especially when we
take into account that not the candidates but the voters bear responsibility
here,” she said.
Aivazovska added that people should be allowed
to vote anywhere throughout the country, at the very least for those candidates
running on the proportional party list ticket, and thus representing the entire
country.
Around 37
percent of Ukrainians live outside their place of registration, according to
estimates by Territory of Success, a non-governmental organization. In Kyiv
alone this number could be as high as two million, the NGO believes. All would
have to travel to other regions of Ukraine if they want to make use of their
electoral rights.
But Andriy
Mahera, deputy head of the Central Election Commission, said anybody could
change their electoral address without changing the place of registration. “A
person who has several places of residence may change the electoral address if
he/she has a notarized agreement for rent,” Mahera said. “This person would
have to visit the voter registration body and write a request for changing the
electoral address,” he added, stressing that for the current elections the
procedure would be problematic due lack of time left until Oct. 28, when the
elections are scheduled.
Yet this is
very problematic, as many Ukrainians rent their place of residency
unofficially, avoiding taxation, onerous registration procedures and the
additional costs to formalize the agreement. Thus, the process disenfranchises
broad swathes of the population.
Kyiv
Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at [email protected]
