You're reading: Activists launch websites to help voters make choice

As Ukraine prepares for the Oct. 26 parliamentary elections, websites rada2014.com.ua and opir.org are servicing the needs of those who still have doubts who they want to vote for.

Rada2014.com.ua allows one to find a candidate that reflects his views most accurately, filtering all the election participants through 13 criteria: age, number of absences during the previous parliamentary sessions, having relatives among other candidates, being born in a foreign country, voting with other deputy’s identification card, being mentioned in the investigations of the corruption deals, bribing the voters, supporting pro-Russian separatism, supporting the Jan. 16 dictatorship laws, having a mandate in the previous Verkhovna Rada, opposing the Feb. 20 legal condemnation of applying physical violence to the EuroMaidan protesters, being a member of the Party of Regions or Communist Party, attitude towards the Sept. 16 lustration law.

After applying these criteria, one may see candidate’s rating according to the evaluation scale. Various graphic elements allow to see which candidates match voters’ expectations and what constituencies they are running in.

Moreover, the website includes latest surveys from the Gorshenin Institute think tank and Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation, a sociological research center.

Rada2014.com.ua allows a voter to see which candidates match his expectations the most.

Rada2014.com.ua is available in Ukrainian, Russian and English, and was launched by RAM 360 marketing agency, Chesno civil movement and Ukrainian Crisis Media Center, a platform for communication with the press that arose after the EuroMaidan Revolution.

RAM 360’s spokesperson Taisiya Ivannikova mentioned the project is a continuation of an analogous website that was created for the 2012 parliamentary elections that the Party of Regions led by then-president Viktor Yanukovych won. Yet in 2012, encouraging the voters to show up in order to prevent falsifying the election was the key driver of the website developers’ motivation, while now it’s more about showing the real faces of the candidates.

Opir.org provides an update on the most recent news related to the parliamentary campaign, however focusing mostly on the political parties rather than particular candidates. It has an option for uploading the information as well as photos and videos regarding the violation of voters’ rights. Moreover, it has an application for mobile devices.

Opir.org publishes the latest news on the election process and provides an opportunity for the election activists to organize their cooperation with each other.

Besides presenting the information, opir.org encourages drivers, journalists, lawyers and all kinds of volunteers to help during the election day and tells them ways to do this.

Kyiv Post website editor Oksana Torhan can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter at @OksanaTorhan