REFLECTIONS OF ELECTION OBSERVERS

Monitoring in Kirovohrad

by Helena Schultz

I am in a passenger van bouncing down the bumpy highway between Kirovohrad and Kyiv in Ukraine. After observing elections all day on December 26, and the tallying and reporting of the results into the early morning hours of December 27, my teammates and I had attempted to catch a few hours of sleep at our heatless hotel (we joked that the only way we could get warmer air into our rooms was to open the windows) before heading back to Kyiv. Now the five others and I were tired and mostly silent or asleep. On the trip down we had chatted and joked as we got acquainted and speculated on what awaited us. Now, after the initial exhilaration of reporting overwhelmingly favorable results for Viktor Yushchenko in all of our precincts, we were anxious to learn how the election went in the rest of the country.

After having witnessed the peaceful demonstrations of the Orange Revolution on behalf of Viktor Yushchenko, my group of observers was anything if not biased in his favor. The hope for a free and democratic Ukraine was the reason our forebears had preserved their beloved culture and language after fleeing to escape the oppression of the Communist era.

Despite anticipating the worst in terms of election violations, our experience in Kirovohrad was anti-climactic. A local coordinator assigned teams of two to visit some six precincts each. Each precinct we visited received us with politeness and even warmth, except for the director of Precinct No. 38 who was facially polite but could not conceal his disdain. I believe just the fact that we had cameras and camcorders and used them liberally was our greatest contribution.

My partner was Stefan Kaczaraj, president of the Ukrainian National Association. At each precinct he immediately sought out the local Yushchenko observers, of which there were generally also two, and went into a huddle with them. I used my limited knowledge of Russian to speak with some of the commissioners and observers for whom Ukrainian did not come readily.

My partner and I opened Precinct No. 12 at which Igor Valentinovich, who was from the Yushchenko camp, was director. Under the new rules, the director and secretary of each precinct had to be from different sides, in addition to which the commission members had to be equally balanced as did the numbers of local observers.

The most serious violation I witnessed occured later, when we returned to Precinct No. 12 about an hour before the polls closed at 8 p.m. By then everyone was comfortable enough to engage in some banter. When I asked the secretary, Ludmilla, who was of the Yanukovych persuasion, how many votes had been cast so far, she indicated some 1,700 as of 6 p.m., then added, "but we expect another 1,700 before 8." This, in a precinct with only a little over 2,000 registered voters, so clearly she was joking!

A little later, a gentleman came in with a voter registration for his wife who was in Kyiv and could not get back to Kirovohrad to vote, so he wanted to vote in her place. Clearly, what he proposed was a violation, but as an observer I hung back to see how the locals would handle it. Ludmilla first told him no, but then relented and started to lead him over to the appropriate commissioners. At that point, I interrupted and announced that was not allowed. Ludmilla acted surprised, and said, "Oh, it's not allowed? Well then, I guess we can't do it." The gentleman took it well because he knew what he was asking was against the rules, but the election commissioner who had started to prepare his ballot and who was a Yushchenko person threw down her pencil in anger.

I concluded that the gentleman was a probable Yushchenko vote and that was reinforced when later another Yushchenko commissioner came and asked me whose side I was on. My response was that I was there to promote an honest election and uphold the laws. I was left wondering how many incidents of this type happened while my partner and I were at other polling places and how many of them favored Viktor. Yanukovych since Ludmilla was making the decisions.

The closing presented challenges of its own. We had some communications with other observers during the day, and the general concensus was that things were going cleanly. Nevertheless, there was concern that, at the end, results could get lost, stolen, misreported, or a serious irregularity could be intentionally introduced to void the votes of an entire precinct.

In Precinct No. 12, the count of the voters from the lists and the number of talons which had to be separated from each ballot before it was given to the voter was off by one. The secretary narrowed the error down to one table of two commissioners, and then spent at least an hour counting and recounting, and checking and rechecking, the result. Still, the count was off by one, and then the accusations and innuendoes and recriminations began. I did not perceive the inability to reconcile one vote as a serious matter and noted separately to both the director and the secretary that the rules provided for the commission to adopt a resolution in such an event. After another hour of raised voices, the commission adopted a resolution with respect to the missing talon.

In the counting process, a ballot surfaced that still had the talon attached. Clearly, one of the commissioners had failed to separate it from the ballot before giving it to the voter, thus creating the inability to reconcile the voting lists with the talons. Given the clear win for Mr. Yushchenko in the precinct, the director was not inclined to argue over the disputed ballots and gave in when the Yanukovych camp wanted to allow the Yanukovych votes and disallow the Yushchenko votes. Six ballots did not have the commission stamp on them, clearly an error on the part of the commission members who handed out those ballots and not a voter error. It was the consensus of the commissioners to go ahead and supply the missing stamp to validate those ballots, which was done.

However, after the protocol tallying up the election results was prepared for signature by the commissioners and observers, and the envelopes containing the ballots were ready to be sealed, the Yanukovych commissioners raised a ruckus about the irregularity of supplying the missing stamps. This looked and smelled like a pre-planned effort to try to invalidate the election results. Another two hours of yelling back and forth at each other followed. I could not believe my eyes and ears, and longed helplessly for the presence of a parliamentarian or a sergeant at arms. Finally, the Yanukovych camp drew up some kind of objection to present to the territorial election commission.

We were then able to get into our vehicle to follow the director and the Yanukovych representative to the territorial commission with the results. The territorial commission accepted our results, and at about 3 a.m. my experience as an election observer came to an end. My partner and I went looking for a bar to have a drink by way of celebrating, but besides being 3 a.m. it was a Sunday, so nothing was open. We returned to our cold hotel rooms to bundle up even more and watch the televised results come in.

I would like to think that I, along with the other 12,000 or so observers, made a difference in that election. However, I believe I got more out of the experience than I gave. It was truly a revelation to me to become acquainted with the other observers who were so much more fluent in Ukrainian than I and could go easily from one language to the other. Besides Ukrainian Americans, there were also Ukrainian Canadians, Ukrainian Australians, Ukrainian Brits, etc. I was inspired just to be where history was being made, where Ukrainians, young and old, had taken to the streets in their bid for a democratic society. I was impressed with the orderly and non-violent way the elections were actually conducted.

Finally, after years of maintaining the hope for a Ukraine that is independent and fair and free, may it be so.

Helena Schultz, a lawyer from Colorado, traveled to Ukraine as an election observer of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, February 13, 2005, No. 7, Vol. LXXIII

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