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

1. Maidan Monitoring:
Election 2012
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
http://world.maidan.org.ua
Renaissance Foundation and members

2. 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 Parliament
2010 – 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 http://world.maidan.org.ua

3. 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”.
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.
Throughout all of it's history Maidan has been bringing together
civil activists from Ukraine and abroad dedicated to strengthening
democracy in Ukraine. http://world.maidan.org.ua

4. Project Concept
To 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 http://world.maidan.org.ua
activists and experienced democracy advocates.

5. Monitoring Elections
2012. 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.
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.
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 Parliamentary election in Ukraine
next elections. We monitor elections since 2004. were held on October 28, 2012.

6. Timeline and stats
Number of violations per cities
Sources of reports on the map
Regional distribution of violations
http://world.maidan.org.ua

7. 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 campaigning
5. Violations in election commission’s
functioning
6. Inequality of participants
Our detailed monitoring summary had been sent to all
international observers. We had officially submitted
them to Ukrainian government authorities. http://world.maidan.org.ua

8. 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.
Most reports of violations are related to Party of Regions
and affiliated candidates.
Our monitoring summaries had been officially submitted it to
Ukrainian government authorities. They have been used by Cabinet
of Ministers. http://world.maidan.org.ua

9. 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.
Reports included video or
photographic evidence or
official documents and were
verified by the editors and
evaluated and commented on
by the lawyers.
We engaged 470+ volunteers from all
regions of Ukraine.
There were reports from 420+
locations.
Most violations were reported from Odesa region,
Kyiv city and Kharkiv region. http://world.maidan.org.ua

10. 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
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.
Roman Bilyk, volunteer,
Teplodar, submitted 8 reports

11. 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 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.
The legal discussion about this (above) picture started our
communication and cooperation with Ombudsman’s
http://world.maidan.org.ua
office.

12. Internationally
Aknowledged
We established working contacts with international election observers from:
Canada (CANADEM), OSCE, USA, Japan and the European Parliament and
Ukrainian diaspora.
Meeting with CANADEM representatives in Kharkiv -
Sept 26th 2012
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
http://world.maidan.org.ua

13. More Info
Contact Maidan
Natalka Zubar, Kharkiv, Ukraine
Phone: +380 50 401 23 83
Email: pani@maidan.org.ua Skype: nelliza111
Oleksiy Kuzmenko, Washington, DC
Phone: 202 549 20 68
Email: oleksiy.kuzmenko@gmail.com 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
http://world.maidan.org.ua