Vote observers tally fraud

By Aleksandar Vasovic
The Associated Press

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These are just some of the tricks used to skew Ukraine's disputed presidential election, observers say.

Peter Novotny, the Slovak head of the 1,000-strong observer mission of the European Network of Election Monitors, described the vote as "an outright fraud."

The international observers question the Ukraine election commission's decision to declare Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych the winner of the Nov. 21 runoff with a margin of 3 percent — some 880,000 votes — ahead of opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko.

Yushchenko's lawyers have asked the Supreme Court to name him the winner, presenting examples of electoral fraud that focus on eight eastern and southern regions with more than 15 million votes, almost half of the total cast.

Examples of fraud documented by the observers took place in regions that voted for Yanukovych, including precincts where turnout figures exceeded 127 percent. Observers attributed this mainly to pro-Yanukovych activists who traveled across the country and voted many times as absentees.

Ukraine's opposition has produced transcripts of telephone conversations between key pro-Yanukovych officials, allegedly taped by the Ukraine's Security Service, documenting vote-rigging. One exchange, published on the Ukrayinska Pravda Web site, went like this:

Official 1: "Why is the voting rate in the Donetsk and Dnepropetrovsk regions so low?"

Official 2: "We're increasing it now."

Prison officials were also reported to have forced inmates to vote for the government's candidate. In addition, some hospital patients were told how to vote if they wanted treatment, said a Western observer in the eastern Kharkiv region.

Students were stripped of their right to a secret ballot — or they faced the loss of privileges.
 
"We had to, or we could have lost our rooms on campus" said Serhiy, a student from Yanukovych's eastern stronghold of Donetsk, who revealed only his first name for fear of reprisals.

Stephen Sestanovich, a U.S. observer from the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, said his delegation saw "the use of ink that disappeared in four minutes" — a practice that came to light when people noticed the white paper ballots in the transparent boxes were blank.

Violence was also employed, with many observers being threatened or beaten. One policeman guarding ballots was killed, and another was beaten.

Novotny said one group of his observers was held at gunpoint in eastern Ukraine.

Observers also noted the practice of "home-voting," a provision tailored for the elderly, disabled and others unable to leave their homes. Between the Oct. 31 first round and the runoff, the number of voters who applied for home voting doubled, Novotny said.

Election officials were also reported to have simply allotted "entire piles of ballots" to Yanukovych, Novotny said. "We had cases where the entire vote-counting was over in less than 20 minutes."

In several central and eastern Ukrainian regions, Yanukovych activists threatened voters. Ukrainian media and observers also reported vandalism, with masked people attacking polling stations and pouring glue over ballots.

The opposition also blamed the Central Election Commission for producing inaccurate voting lists. In the Donetsk region alone, observers registered more than half a million more voters in the runoff than in the first round.