The Central Election Commission took a Resolution #185 on September 12, 2017 allowing the Civil Network OPORA AUNGO to deploy official observers in the first local elections on 29 October 2017. OPORA's observers will provide an independent non-partisan observation of the first local elections in united territorial communities. The organization has deployed 69 long-term observers to the territorial communities, and 122 short-term observers will join them right before the voting begins.
The elections will be held in all Ukrainian oblasts: Vinnytsia oblast – 9 UTCs; Volyn oblast – 19; Dnipropetrovsk oblast – 19; Donetsk oblast – 2; Zhytomyr oblast – 13; Zakarpattia oblast –– 1; Zaporizhia oblast – 10; Ivano-Frankivsk oblast – 8; Kyiv oblast – 4; Kirovohrad oblast – 6; Luhansk oblast – 4; Lviv oblast – 8; Mykolaiv oblast – 1; Odesa oblast – 11; Poltava oblast – 12; Rivne oblast – 5; Sumy oblast – 9; Ternopil oblast – 4; Kharkiv oblast – 7; Kherson oblast – 10; Khmelnytsk oblast – 7; Cherkasy oblast – 15; Chernivtsi oblast – 4; Chernihiv oblast – 14. According to the information provided by the CEC, over 1 million 330 thousand voters will be able to participate in the election, what comprises around 4% of all Ukrainian voters. Thus, territorial election commissions created 4,506 territorial electoral districts for the election.
The voting will ve held in 25 cities of raion significance, 61 settlements and 115 villages. Based on the election outcomes, 4,506 members of city, settlement and village councils will be elected, as well as 201 city, settlement and village heads. Election to local councils is held under the proportional representation electoral system, with candidates from local party cells, nominated in the certain territorial election districts. Members of village and settlement councils are elected under the majoritarian system of relative majority in single-member districts. Election of city, village and settlement heads are held under one-round system, because none of the cities have more than 90 thousand voters.
According to the effective legislation, 50 political parties have approved participation of their local cells in the first local elections scheduled for 29 October 2017.
609 of 944 (65%) candidates for heads of UTCs were nominated independently, and 255 (35%) were nominated by local party cells. 16,133 candidates are registered in election to village and settlement councils, including 11,398 (71%) of candidates nominated by political parties and 4,375 (29%) of independent candidates.
There are 6,116 candidates for members of city councils (according to the data from CEC's website).
It should be mentioned that preparatory meetings of precinct election commissions are scheduled for 7:15 AM. The voting is to be held from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM.
OPORA publishes the information about detected violations during the election campaign, particularly on the election day, on its website (oporaua.org), and in social networks Facebook (www.facebook.com/cn.opora) and Twitter (twitter.com/opora).
We urge the citizens to report any detected violations on OPORA's hotline: (044) 591 44 44 (calls are charged according to the tariffs of your operator