ODESA, Ukraine - Local elections in the Black Sea port of Odesa on Oct. 25 were marred by accusations of voting fraud and a low turnout.
The elections included those for Odesa’s mayor, Odesa’s city council and Odesa Oblast’s regional council.
In the mayoral election, incumbent Mayor Hennady Trukhanov either won in the first round or got into the second round along with Sasha Borovik, an aide to Odesa Oblast Governor Mikheil Saakashvili, according to different exit polls.
The turnout amounted to 29.6 percent as of 4 p.m., according to the Ukrainian Voters Committee.
At Odesa’s polling station 511320, observers saw voters who took pictures of their ballots, Daria Kurbatova, an observer for the Vidrodzhennya party, told the Kyiv Post.
The move could be interpreted as a sign of voting fraud. The alleged scheme involves voters taking photos of their ballots as proof of their vote for a certain candidate and then getting paid for that.
Another hotspot was polling station 511384, where a woman allegedly gave written instructions to voters on how to vote and then they received Hr 200 each, according to Serhiy Hutsalyuk, a Batkyvshchyna party candidate running for Odesa’s city council.
He published a scanned copy of the instructions on Facebook.
He accused Serhiy Strashny, a candidate for the city council from Odesa Mayor Hennady Trukhanov’s Trust in Deeds party, of organizing the scheme.
Strashny denied the accusations in a conversation with the Kyiv Post.
Todor Panovsky, a Petro Poroshenko Bloc candidate for the city council who tried to detain the woman, told the Kyiv Post she had attempted to run away from him.
Representatives of the Trust in Deeds party interfered in her favor to help her flee, he said. He added that she had Trust in Deeds campaign materials. The woman was detained, and the police opened a criminal case into the issue. Another presumed violation was the presence of campaign billboards on Oct. 24 and Oct. 25, when campaigning was banned.
This reporter saw a Batkyvshchyna billboard in Odesa on Oct. 24. On Oct. 25, the reporter saw billboards that had themes and design similar to the Trukhanov and Vidrodzhennya campaigns but did not feature their names.
