Ukraine: Ballot's Complexity Reflects Choices In Elections

Ukraine: Ballot's Complexity Reflects Choices In Elections

By Askold Krushelnycky

Election officials say turnout in today's parliamentary polls in Ukraine was approximately 60 percent. Some 45 parties were contesting four elections that were being held simultaneously -- the parliamentary vote and three additional local elections: the mayor of Kyiv, the Kyiv City Council, and the local district council. Ballots were very long and not easy to read. As the average voter took around 15 minutes to fill out their ballot form, there were long lines outside some polling stations.

KYIV, March 26, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Oleksandr Vanyurikhin, head of the election commission at polling station No. 9, in Kyiv's Pechersk district, said that voting had been brisk and on the whole smooth.

"We started a meeting of our local election commission at 6:15 this morning that lasted 45 minutes," he said. "We decided on what everyone would do, where each of us would sit and what our duties would be. We opened the safe, took out the voting ballots and were open at 7 a.m. for voting."

Vanyurikhin said that the voting procedure was far more complex than in previous elections and there had been difficulties. He said some elderly people had spent more than half an hour completing their ballot papers.

"The previous elections [the presidential poll in 2004] were by comparison very easy because there were only two candidates: Yushchenko and Yanukovych," he said. "The ballot papers were very short and simple. But today we have four separate ballot papers for candidates for parliament, the mayor of Kyiv, the Kyiv City Council, and the local district council."

By 7 p.m. Kyiv time, just over 800 of the district's 1,300 registered voters had cast their ballots. Vanyurikhin, who has served four times on his local election commission, anticipated less than 1,000 people would have voted before the end of the day -- a slightly lower turnout than in the presidential election.

Another member of polling station's commission was Kateryna Balakina, a student at Kyiv University. She thought that there would be a lower turnout because many people had been disappointed by what they thought was the poor performance of the Orange coalition and were disillusioned by the split between the two former Orange Revolution leaders, President Viktor Yushchenko, leader of the Our Ukraine bloc, and former Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko.

"More people than last time will fail to vote, I can tell you that with certainty," she said. "I think this is not just how students feel but the majority of people. The Our Ukraine team fell apart into many different groups so that the unity that existed during the Orange Revolution is no longer there and the unity that was among the people. Now we see that those politicians who were once together now insult one another and have practically become opponents and that is a very extreme change."

Pensioner Maria Strylchenko said that the only person she trusted was President Yushchenko, but after she had studied the complex ballot paper she couldn't find his name anywhere and so didn't vote for anyone.

"If I had found the name Yushchenko anywhere I would have voted for it but he was not there," she said. "I sat down and was reading it and couldn't find him so at the end I just wrote on it that I was voting for nobody."

Lawyer Svetlana Chykyndyuk came to the polling station with her daughter, Yuliya, a student. Both said they had voted for Tymoshenko. They hoped that Tymoshenko's party would unite with Yushchenko's Our Ukraine to renew the Orange coalition.

"I voted for the Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc because I regard her as a very strong and intelligent woman and she will be able to defend Ukraine's citizens and can represent their interests in a dignified way," Chykyndyuk said.

Shortly after closing the polling stations, exit polls put the pro-Russian Party of Regions in first place with the Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc following close behind.

Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

Ukraine: Ballot's Complexity Reflects Choices In Elections