Numerous manipulations of the voter lists, violations during the voting and the vote count, as well as high number of cases of direct falsifications of results by electoral commissions influenced the final outcome of the referendum.

15 EPDE members assess proceedings of the Ukraine Local Elections held in October and November 2015. Election experts report on key aspects :  new election law, campaign in Donbass, so called "fake observation" and voting opportunities for IDPs. 

A significant number of international observation missions registered for the recent Parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan have violated international standards of election observation. 

EPDE notes that the rights of the proxies and international observers are described insufficiently in the Electoral Code. In some of the polling stations members of election commissions were not aware of the rights of international observers.

A group of civic election observers from the EPDE member organizations from Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Germany, Moldova, Norway, Poland and Russia observe the local elections in Ukraine scheduled for 25 October 2015. 

The early voting started at the elections of President of the Republic of Belarus on October 6 in conformity with the Electoral Code of the Republic of Belarus. 

Observers note the closed character of the electoral commissions, refusals of the election commissions to provide observers with relevant information are registered all over the country.

Authoritarian regimes "copy and paste" laws to restrict the watchdog function of independent election observers.

The topic of the event is the increasing political, legal and administrative pressure against independent citizens' observers in OSCE countries. Examples from Russia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Belarus will be discussed.

As a rule, the targets are opposition parties and candidates who are perceived to be serious competitors to the authorities. Unfortunately, in these situations the police is often sluggish or simply does nothing.

Judging by this year’s continuing trend, the number of re-elected governors with foreign donors will increase after Election Day on September 13. The biggest beneficiaries of foreign funds are the candidates nominated by the ruling “United Russia”.

In the run-up to Election Day, scheduled for September 13, 2015, Golos conducted the monitoring of the judicial practice of holding election commission members legally responsible for electoral law violations.

“Golos” draws public attention to deviations from the standards of democratic elections, primarily evident in the manipulation of electoral law for political reasons shortly before the elections.