Ukrainians registered to vote in March similar to 2014 figure, official says

The number of citizens registered to vote in the March
presidential election will be similar to the amount registered for the 2014
presidential vote, said Oleksandr Stelmakh, the head of the State Voter
Register Service Manager. As of Jan. 1, 30.0 mln Ukrainian citizens are
registered to vote, if to exclude the residents of occupied Crimea and Donbas,
he said, as reported by the pravda.com.ua news site on Jan. 27. The number of
registered voters decreased by 80,000 since 2014, he estimated, adding that voter
registers are renewed every month. They will also be reviewed and updated ten
and four days before the March 31 vote, he said.

Anatoliy Grytsenko, the former defense minister and
presidential candidate, said his campaign has been unable to perform a thorough
review of the state voter register and will consider a lawsuit against the
Central Election Commission (CEC). He said he wants to review the voter
register to prevent potential vote fraud by the government, which controls it.
“In these elections, unlike those prior, I can’t work with the register where
and when it convenient for me,” he said. “Only in the CEC building, in a
special room, at a special computer, only on weekdays and during working hours.
I can’t involve in the register’s review anyone else, even those registered
with the CEC as my powers of attorney.”

Zenon Zawada: The notion
that there are only 80,000 fewer eligible Ukrainian voters compared to 2014
isn’t credible considering that Ukraine’s mortality rate has far exceeded its
birth rate for the last two decades. This election official didn’t mention that
the number of potential voters is even less if to consider that millions of
Ukrainians have left the country – both temporarily and permanently since 2014
– for economic reasons and won’t be present on election day.

So given the large numbers of dead voters and absent
voters still on the registers, the dominant political forces (Poroshenko Bloc,
Opposition Bloc, Fatherland) have large flexibility in engaging in vote
manipulations in those election commissions where they have an advantage in
loyal representatives.

Naturally, the president has the largest advantage in
not only influencing local election commissions, but also election bodies at
the regional and national levels (including forming the register). So this
dubious estimate of eligible voters, as well as potential voters, works to the
president’s advantage. Grytsenko’s inability to review the state voter register
is cause for even more concern.