The higher is the number of people who will cast their ballots in elections, the lower will be the possibilities of rigging and manipulation of the participants in the electoral race, Sergey Manastyrly, director of the Research, Analysis and Forecasts Center Balkan Center, stated in IPN’s public debate “Election rigging: how it is done, how to fight it”.

He spoke about the measures that can help reduce the possibilities of vote rigging in the upcoming presidential elections. “This is the civil society’s information campaign to attract attention to elections. This campaign took place mainly online owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it anyway influenced the people’s awareness of the elections and of the necessity of going to the polls. The CEC’s decision to ban the movement of units of transport with more than eight occupants on the election day is important as this can really prevent the organized transportation of voters,” stated the expert.

He noted that the mechanisms for corrupting voters ahead of the elections remain yet. “Presents, food package, employment assistance. The buckwheat political strategists, as they are called in Ukraine, are working. Corruption depraves the voters and makes them look at the elections as at the possibility of obtaining a sack of coal wood, money. As a result, it is much harder for the parties that do not have shadow budgets to work with the voters and to make promises,” explained Sergey Manastyrly.

“As regards rigging on the election day, everything depends on the political parties and their observers, on how ready they will be to document the violations and gather pertinent evidence, like transportation of voters and falsification of ballots.”

The public debate “Election rigging: how it is done, how to fight it” was held as part of the mini-series “We and the President: who elects who, who represents who?” that is part of the project “Developing political culture through public debate” that is implemented by IPN with support from the Hanns Seidel Foundation.