On November 13-14, a conference* was held in Kyiv on the results of the 2019 parliamentary and presidential election campaigns in Ukraine. More than 200 representatives of the election administration, legislative, executive and judiciary branches, NGOs and electoral experts participated in discussions on current and future challenges in organizing and conducting the electoral process, as well as on respective possible solutions both at the legislative level and in practice.
During the event, Oleh Didenko, Chairman of the Central Election Commission (CEC), stressed that "the work on improving electoral legislation is being actively pursued, and the CEC is joining the process of change and has already developed and forwarded the respective recommendations to the Verkhovna Rada." In her turn, Alina Zagoruyko, Deputy Chairwoman of the Committee and Chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Elections, Referenda and Other Forms of Direct Democracy of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Organizing State Power, Local Self-Government, Regional Development and Urban Planning, expressed the strong support and readiness to cooperate with a view to further improving the electoral law.
Francois Friederich, Head of the Division of Electoral Assistance of the Council of Europe’s Directorate General of Democracy, expressed the readiness of the Council of Europe to continue providing all necessary support to the process of improving electoral practices and legislation in Ukraine, emphasizing that "any legislative framework should provide for clear and effective mechanisms on monitoring and enforcing the established rules. Otherwise, neither voters would be able to make an informed choice, nor would candidates and political parties have equal opportunities to campaign."
The participants of the conference discussed existing problems and developed recommendations for possible solutions in the following thematic working groups:
- election administration;
- voter registration;
- pre-election campaigning and political finance;
- election observation;
- voting, vote counting and tabulation;
- inclusion and accessibility;
- cybersecurity and disinformation;
- election dispute resolution and electoral violations.
We hope that the recommendations developed by the participants of the conference will be further used to improve electoral law and electoral practices at both national and regional levels.
* The event was organized by the Council of Europe Project "Supporting the transparency, inclusiveness and integrity of electoral practice in Ukraine" in cooperation with the Central Election Commission, the OSCE Project Coordinator in Ukraine and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems.
