You're reading: UPDATE: Polling precinct secretary dead, ballots missing

Oleksandr Turchynov, The campaign manager for presidential candidate Yuliya Tymoshenko, on Feb. 7 announced that its party representative and secretary of a polling precinct in Ivano Frankivsk Oblast has been found dead.

"The secretary of Polling Precinct 62 from Voting District Number 85 was at her polling precinct before she died," Turchynov said. "The safe at her polling precinct was found open and voting ballots were missing."

Turchynov added that polling commission representatives of Tymoshenko have been harrassed in Donetsk Oblast and in Crimea.

Spokesman for the Interior Ministry’s office for the Ivano-Frankivsk region, Vasyl Hultaichuk, on Sunday morning confirmed the death of the 60-year-old election commission member of Unizh, Horodenkivsky District.

The man’s body was found with a bucket near a pile of coal three hundred meters away from the polling station, Hultaichuk said.

"However, this death has nothing to do with the electoral process," the spokesman said.

The polling station opened on time, at 8:00 a.m., and the voting is well under way, he said.

A group of investigators and one forensic expert are working at the scene. At the headquarters of Tymoshenko’s rival Victor Yanukovych, campaign spokeswoman Hanna Herman said that no systemic voting violations have been revealed thus far. .