election 2012 monitoring project results

Maidan Monitoring:Election 2012

http://world.maidan.org.ua

Monitoring the observance of the Law “On elections of people’s deputies in Ukraine” during the Parliamentary Election in Ukraine on October 28th 2012

Project is supported by the International Renaissance Foundation and members

Maidan’s Election Monitoring Story


Maidan.org.ua Online community formed in 2000 by activists united to protest the murder of independent journalist Georgiy Gongadze.

2004 – Maidan was the main internet hub for Orange Revolution; Volunteers reported up to 1500 news a day. Monitors aggregated election reports from 30 countries 70 cars patrolled election precincts in Kyiv and coordinated via site Reports were used in the Supreme Court

2006 – Parliamentary election, first project on citizen sociology, we compared voters’ preferences and priorities of the politicians and correctly predicted very sad future of the Parliament2010 – President’s election, we documented the total lack of communication with citizens and predicted the failure of social dialog with the next elected President

Site gets 120.000 visitors per month for 8 last years. Most of our visitors are dedicated activists. Our projects traditionally involve hundreds of volunteers

The Monitoring Team


2012 – Parliamentary election, we formed a team of dedicated professionals to properly monitor and document the observance of election law – 16 people total.The project name was “Maidan Monitoring: Election 2012”.

Throughout all of it's history Maidan has been bringing together civil activists from Ukraine and abroad dedicated to strengthening democracy in Ukraine.

Maidan is a network of experienced human rights activists, law, psychology, communication and IT experts, journalists and technically savvy concerned citizens.

We telecommute for 12 years.

Our core team members live in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, Odesa, Simferopol, Ternopil, Kremenchuk, USA and Canada.

Project ConceptTo create a factual map of electoral law violations we:

1)crowd sourced photo, documents and video proofs of violations, 2)had experts verify them, 3)posted verified data on map,4)encouraged feedback.

Thus we created a vibrant link between activists on the ground and expert democracy advocates, enabling highly detailed, factual mapping of violations.

We'll continue to develop this success in our new projects fostering this valuable connection between activists and experienced democracy advocates.


Monitoring Elections2012. Interactive crowd-sourced map of violations of electoral law. Citizen reports were added to the map only accompanied by photo and/or video evidence and after verification by law experts. We observed the systemic violations.

Parliamentary election in Ukraine were held on October 28, 2012.

1637 complaints regarding violations of the electoral law were added to the interactive map. The total number of violations reported to the project team was 7062.

Software and experience will be used for monitoring next elections. We monitor elections since 2004.

476 volunteers reported from 421 locations.

Together with ombudsman we made the Central Election Commission to add warning signs about cameras not observing the voting booths.

Timeline and stats


Regional distribution of violations

Number of violations per cities

Sources of reports on the map

Violations with Most Impact on Election Results


1. Administrative pressure 2. Widespread deception of voters, e.g.

public works funded by the state budget are presented to voters as results of private efforts of a certain candidate or party.

3. Widespread indirect bribery of voters. 4. Obstruction of campaigning5. Violations in election commission’s

functioning6. Inequality of participants

Our detailed monitoring summary had been sent to all international observers. We had officially submitted them to Ukrainian government authorities.

Worst Offenders


The major violator of the Election Law is the Ukrainian government, who:

1. Did not provide the stable, transparent, unambiguous election law thus having failed to maintain the principle of legal certainty.

2. Did not guarantee that the organization of district election commissions in carried out in perfectly transparent and legitimate way.

3. Does not protect the citizens from manipulations and extralegal coercion which is becoming the major threat to society along with corruption.

Our monitoring summaries had been officially submitted it to Ukrainian government authorities. They have been used by Cabinet of Ministers.

Most reports of violations are related to Party of Regions and affiliated candidates.

Data Flow


Reports were crowdsourced from a quickly growing network of concerned citizens determined to hold those responsible for violations of the law accountable. Information is being submitted through a web form, email, phone, or social networks.

Most violations were reported from Odesa region, Kyiv city and Kharkiv region.

We engaged 470+ volunteers from all regions of Ukraine. There were reports from 420+ locations.

Reports included video or photographic evidence or official documents and were verified by the editors and evaluated and commented on by the lawyers.

Reporters: Making a Difference 1. Citizens submited not only final cases but also informed us on upcoming events. 2. Volunteers “picked up” on information and made photos and videos. Sometimes it took traveling to long distance. 3. Activists were using the reports on the map in courts and sometimes won

Roman Bilyk, volunteer, Teplodar, submitted 8 reports

Crowdsourced photos of flags of Party of regions displayed at local councils in villages near Odessa caught attention of the Ombudsman. As a result the violation stopped.

Empowering Citizens


We encouraged netizens to look for and document violations by providing them with simple visual HowTos - Motivators based on real reports.Our visual motivators were eagerly shared. They sparked legal discussions and made people talk about the ethical issues in the elections.

The legal discussion about this (above) picture started our communication and cooperation with Ombudsman’s office.

The photo (left) shows political advertising of party of Regions on a public transport in Luhansk.

Gifts branded with political logos, given to kids in a school near Kyiv.

Internationally Aknowledged


We established working contacts with international election observers from: Canada (CANADEM), OSCE, USA, Japan and the European Parliament and Ukrainian diaspora.

Our expert Yuriy Lukanov (on the right) – key speaker in the debate on "The Ukrainian parliamentary election 2012 in the perspective of the Civil Society Representatives" in the European Parliament, Brussels - Sept 26th 2012

English language summaries of our project findings were very popular and were used by many observers

Meeting with CANADEM representatives in Kharkiv - Sept 26th 2012

More Info


Contact Maidan

Natalka Zubar, Kharkiv, UkrainePhone: +380 50 401 23 83Email: [email protected] Skype: nelliza111

Oleksiy Kuzmenko, Washington, DC Phone: 202 549 20 68Email: [email protected] Skype: oleksiykuzmenko

Our site in English http://world.maidan.org.ua The monitoring summary and periodic reports could be found there

Interface map is available in English http://maidanua.org/vybory2012/main?l=en_US Reports are Google translated, human translations are available upon request.

The “Maidan-Monitoring” project is supported by the International Renaissance Foundation and the contributions of team members

election 2012 monitoring project results

Documents

observance of election

unambiguous election

reports of violations

election precincts

theparliamentary election

election results1

aggregated election

responsiblefor violations