You're reading: Mismatch in ballot numbers stokes fears of fraud in presidential vote

The Central Election Commission has altered the number of ballot papers it has allocated for the first round of the upcoming March 31 presidential election, increasing the number of first-round ballots by more than a quarter of a million compared to the second round, scheduled for April 21.

The change was indicated in tender documents published through the Prozorro public procurement system.

Initially the Central Election Commission ordered 30.2 million sets of ballot papers for the first round, and the same amount for the second one.

However, the commission later reallocated 263,000 ballots from the run-off to the first round.

Nashi Hroshi, a Ukrainian news website monitoring procurement and investigating corruption, citing their sources, attributed the change to a possible attempt by the commission to stuff extra ballots in favor of President Petro Poroshenko in the first round. Kostyantyn Khivrenko, a spokesman for the Central Election Commission, denied the accusations.

Yevhen Radchenko, a deputy head of the Central Election Commission, said the number of ballots in the first round had increased due to the creation of new polling stations in the military and in hospitals.

Khivrenko said that the tender documents contained all necessary information, but he could not explain the difference between the number of ballots in the first and second rounds. He said the commission would explain this later.

The tender documents also contain two different figures for the total number of voters: 29.9 million and 30.2 million. Khrivenko could not explain the difference either.