You're reading: Poll: Most Ukrainians don’t understand how to vote in Oct. 25 elections

With the campaign for Oct. 25 local elections in its final days, more voters know who they want to vote for than how to vote.

A poll shows that a third of voters have
decided on candidates while the same poll shows only 20 percent of voters say
they know how to vote.

But most — at least 55 percent of respondents
all over Ukraine — say that the local elections will change nothing, while 4
percent believe the situation will be even worse. In the embattled Donbas
Oblast, 70 percent think the election won’t help.

These are some of the findings from a poll
conducted by the respected Democratic Initiatives Foundation on Oct. 8-20.

It also found that only 12 percent of
respondents say they understand the new election law, meaning the complex
voting procedure will inevitably cause problems with vote counts and
distribution of seats.

The complexities will
also undermine people’s trust in a “transparent election process,” says Iryna
Bekeshkina, who heads the Democratic Initiatives Foundation.

Ukrainians will get three
or four ballots, depending on the city or town they live in.

Cities with more than
90,000 residents will choose the mayor, members of the city council and oblast
council. Residents of cities with up to 90,000 residents will also vote for
members of the councils in their city districts.

Experts say that even the
local election commissions’ workers often don’t know all the details of voting
procedure and so make mistakes.

OPORA elections watchdog
counted more than 1,081 cases of violations in this election campaign thus far.

Only a third of
respondents say they’ve already decided which candidates they are going to vote
for and 49 percent of them are interested to find out more about the candidates
and the parties’ programs.

Based on the parties’
lists, Nataliya Lynnyk, deputy head of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, a
nationwide election watchdog, says there won’t be many new faces as 60 percent
of the lists are dominated by the people from “old elites.” Also, passing the 5
percent threshold would be a difficult task for many new parties.

Some 13.5 percent of
respondents say they will vote for the candidate of the President Petro
Poroshenko Bloc, while 8.4 percent consider voting for the candidate of
Opposition Bloc – which is well-stocked with members of the former ruling Party
of Regions.

Candidates of Batkivshyna
and Samopomich pro-government parties have 6.8 and 7.8 percent of support
respectively. However, there are 37.5 percent of undecided voters, according to
the poll.

“This means that most of
the voters won’t make an informed decision,” Olga Aivazovska head of OPORA
says.

Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Goncharova can be reached at [email protected].