Many Unable to Cast Their Ballots (Ukraine)..names missing on voter rolls

[Dover]

Monday, November 1, 2004. Page 3.

Many Unable to Cast Their Ballots

By Francesca Mereu
Staff Writer

Ivan Sekretarev / AP

KIEV -- Yevgeny Pinchuk, 24, and his younger sister were among the many Ukrainians who were unable to vote Sunday because of problems with the voter rolls. His name was misspelled and her name was not listed at all.

"I voted before, so they should have had my name already," Pinchuk said Saturday. He had stopped by his polling station ahead of the election to make sure he and his sister, who is 20, were on the list of eligible voters.

After discovering the problems, they had tried to get their names onto the list, but were unable to go through the "terrible bureaucratic procedure" to do so in time, he said.
Pinchuk, who works for a telecommunications company that employs about 100 people, said many of his co-workers faced the same problems. "People had to struggle to vote," he said.

.Yevgeny Poberezhny, deputy chairman of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, a nongovernmental election watchdog, confirmed that problems with the voter rolls were widespread, and he accused election officials of intentionally preventing many people from casting their ballots so as to make it easier to falsify the vote.

Yelena, a 26-year-old businesswoman, was another potential voter who went to her polling station ahead of time to check the list of eligible voters and found her name missing.
"I've been living in the same apartment for 15 years and I've voted so many times at the same polling station. I don't understand why this time my name is missing," she said...cont'd

http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2004/11/01/010.html

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Massive electoral violations reported in Ukraine (Part 2)

Interfax. Sunday, Oct. 31, 2004, 5:59 PM Moscow Time

KYIV. Oct 31 (Interfax-Ukraine) - Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko's campaign staff said it has identified massive violations in Sunday's presidential elections.
The most "technical" violations were registered in the Ternopol, Vinnitsa, and Poltava regions, the press service said.
In the Lviv region, many voters have not been entered on voters' lists, representatives of Yanukovych's headquarters said. On several occasions attempts were made to use the Ukrainian passports of citizens who are currently working abroad, Interfax was told


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Ukrainian presidential candidate expects vote rigging

Interfax. Sunday, Oct. 31, 2004, 3:39 PM Moscow Time

KYIV. Oct 31 (Interfax-Ukraine) - Ukrainian presidential candidate Anatoliy Kinakh urged Ukrainian citizens to come to polling stations and cast their votes, and not yield to the pressure of dishonest election propaganda. He said vote rigging is possible.
"Unfortunately, the situation remains alarming. I've been in high- level politics for 15 years, but have not experienced such pressure before. A day before elections, people have strong doubts about whether or not a state of emergency will be introduced, whether or not elections will be foiled and what the real scope of fraud is," Kinakh said after he cast his ballot in Kyiv on Sunday


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Exit polls normal practice - Lytvyn

Interfax. Sunday, Oct. 31, 2004, 2:29 PM Moscow Time

KYIV. Oct 31 (Interfax-Ukraine) - Ukrainian parliament speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn said exit polls are a normal practice.
"It is a normal practice, if conducted in a civilized way, and if no exit polls are organized specially to blur the objective picture," Lytvyn told reporters at a polling station in Kyiv.
He said the results of exit polls and official vote counts coincided in 1999 and 2000. "I think the practice of holding exist polls should be continued so we remain informed about public moods," Lytvyn said


http://www.moscowtimes.ru/doc/HotNews.html#63103

[da_chimperor]

1. Vote rigging is POSSIBLE? Try guaranteed

Kuchma is a world-class bastard and I'd be bowled over if he didn't fiddle with the results. It's a shame that the country is so riddled with corruption. From what my Ukrainian friends tell me, everything has a price from driver's licenses to college degrees. I'm sure getting on the voter roll that you're supposed to be on anyway also has a price.

[Dover]

3. Saw this statement almost verbatum regarding U.S. voter's experiences..

"I've been living in the same apartment for 15 years and I've voted so many times at the same polling station. I don't understand why this time my name is missing," she said...

It seems that voting fraud is following the same pattern in many parts of the world....and is worse than usual.

[Nicholas_J]

2. What do you expect

None of the states of the ex-Soviet Union or Warsaw Pact more than supoerficially resemble demomocracies or representative governments.. Almost all are controlled by mafia like organizations that filled in the power vacuum left after the fall of communism. Bulgaria and Romania are controlled by Olympic athletes who got very rich by product endorsements and who bough up the natural gas and oil corporations in their countries as well as in the Caucasus adn who are the United States biggest partners in the natural gas and energy ventures in the region. Croatia is pretty much a military dictatorship with a puppet legislature, as is Serbia. Uzbekistan is pure and simply a dictatorship as is Belorus. There is a varying degree of democracy in the other states but they are really much closer to dictatorships than democracies. In Romania, Iliescu, by providing mine workers and other blue collar workers with a little more food and comforts, created a Praetorian Guard that controlled the ballot box with fear. In Bulgaria, journalists who write about the sportsmans mafia that constrols the government aimply disappear.

the Ukraine is not muvh different.

[skordane]

4. Everything With the Election is Fine

According to Ukrainian election co-ordinator Katerina Hariskova.

[Dover]

5. "Voters claim abuse of electoral rolls" that's an American news headline

Voters claim abuse of electoral rolls

Students say they were conned into registering twice

Greg Palast in New York
Sunday October 31, 2004
The Observer

An Observer investigation in the United States has uncovered widespread allegations of electoral abuse, many of them going uninvestigated despite complaints of what would appear to be criminal attempts to manipulate voter lists.
The allegations, which come just two days before Americans go to the polls in one of the most tightly contested elections in a generation, threaten to plunge Tuesday's count into a legal minefield and overshadow even the elections of 2000.

The claims come as both Republicans and Democrats put in place up to 2,000 lawyers across the country to challenge attempts to manipulate the vote in swing states.

Although allegations of misconduct have been levelled at both parties recently, the majority of complaints that have been identified in The Observer' s investigation involved claims against local Republicans....cont'd

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1340190,00.html