Documents

With 2019 just around the corner, Ukraine is preparing for two landmark elections next year - presidential and parliamentary elections. Issue no. 10 gives an outlook on next year’s presidential and parliamentary elections with a special focus on the lack of an effective system of legal liability for violations of the electoral law. 

The International Elections Study Centre, an EPDE member from Lithuania, has published a paper, focusing on Russia’s election meddling as a measure of political warfare. For Putin’s regime, meddling in elections is only part of a bigger campaign in the Kremlin’s war against the West, carried out non-stop for a long time and using a variety of methods in its malign activities. It is therefore impossible to analyse this meddling in separation from a general strategy of Putin’s regime or to undertake measures of protection only against election meddling without an effort, comprehensive enough, to fight back against the Russian threat as such.

Near the closing of polling stations, ISFED observed isolated serious incidents, such as: loss of table version of the voters’ list, unauthorized intrusion at precinct with an attempt of kidnapping a mobile ballot box. Other violations observed at this stage were mainly connected to the procedural shortcoming.  At this time, ISFED observers have filed 46 complaints with Precinct Electoral Commissions (PECs) and 54 complaints with District Electoral Commissions (DECs). 

At the moment of this statement, an important trend is the attempts to influence the will of the voters. Similar to the first round of the presidential elections, supporters of Georgian Dream and candidate Salome Zourabichvili, and so called “party coordinators” are mobilized outside of polling stations in various districts. They are tracking the voters who came to the polling stations. ISFED observer also identified a possible case of vote buying near a precinct.

On November 21, the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) published a report of pre-election monitoring of the runoff of the 2018 presidential election. The document covers the period from October 29 to November 19.The election campaign before the runoff was far more polarized and negative than the campaign before first round of the election. During the period between the first and the second round of the election, aggressive rhetoric has intensified. Right after the first round ended, the ruling party representatives made alarming statements and prognoses about threats of civil war and possible destabilization if the opposition candidate wins.

ISFED is conducting a pilot Social Media Monitoring project for the 2018 Presidential Elections in Georgia. Given the increased role of social media in election campaigns and past experience of the use of Facebook for illegal campaigning as well as for discrediting electoral contestants in Georgia, ISFED has developed a methodological approach and with the help of software solutions from NDI has been able to carry out monitoring of the different layers of Facebook activity during the presidential elections in Georgia.

On October 25, the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) presented the third interim report of monitoring the 2018 presidential election of Georgia. The document covers the period of October 1 – 24, it also summarizes developments that began to unfold prior to October 1 but became known during the monitoring period. During the monitoring period ISFED identified: 13 cases of possible pressure and coercion; 5 cases of physical confrontation and violence; 7 cases of misuse of administrative resources; 4 cases of possible vote buying; 11 cases of interference with election campaigning; 14 cases of participation in campaigning in violation of law; 40 cases of damaging campaign materials.