Abstract
This study examines the mechanisms through which the ruling party won a plurality of votes using a combination of legal changes and manipulative practices during the 2012 parliamentary election in Ukraine. Legal changes in electoral rules—the replacement of proportional representation to a mixed system—helped the ruling party weaken the opposition parties. These changes enabled the ruling party to engage in manipulation and fraud during campaigning and on election day by suppressing competition, crowding out the races with “technical” parties and “clone” candidates, and manipulating the composition of electoral commissions. The change of electoral system also enabled outright fraud on election day. A combination of these techniques disrupted both the contestation and participation dimensions of democracy, effectively pushing Ukraine into a state of competitive authoritarianism.
Keywords
Introduction
On 11 November 2012, the Ukrainian Central Election Commission announced that the candidate from the ruling Party of Regions won the race in the 92nd single-member district in the Kyiv Oblast. Among the candidates in this race there were three pairs of candidates with the exact same last names. Two of these candidate-doubles, or “clones,” withdrew from the race but the third one stayed on the ballot and diverted 1,998 votes from the candidate of an opposition party, Batkivshchyna, who finished second. In the same race, the electoral commission invalidated 2,820 ballots and there were 8,140 absentee ballots cast. 1 Out of thirty-nine candidates who initially registered to run, fifteen candidates were disqualified by the Central Election Commission. The number of remaining candidates (twenty-four) was twice the national average, as was the number of absentee votes. If not for the “clone” candidate, invalidated ballots, and the overwhelmingly large number of candidates and absentee ballots, the outcome could have been different because the margin of victory between the Party of Regions’ candidate and the Batkivshchyna’s candidate was only 2,726 votes. This race is a microcosm of the systemic manipulations and fraud that occurred in most single-member district races during the 2012 parliamentary election in Ukraine.
This article examines the strategies of electoral competition—both legal and illegal—used by the incumbent party to win the plurality of votes in the 2012 parliamentary election. The legal changes of electoral rules from a pure proportional system to a mixed single-member district–proportional representation (SMD-PR) system helped weaken the opposition parties. Evidence of manipulations primarily surfaced in the SMD races, suggesting that the electoral system change and the reintroduction of the SMD tier also facilitated fraud during and after election day. The illegal techniques, such as manipulations with the media, ballots, election reports, and electoral commissions, disproportionately benefited the pro-presidential candidates. The two most striking types of manipulation occurred through the formation of District Election Commissions, and the tabulation of election results in the SMD races. Pro-government candidates received preferential treatment in media coverage, preferential representation in election commissions, and the ability to use state agencies in order to establish control over election results. 2 In instances where the legality of results was questioned, the pro-government candidates benefited from the leniency of the judiciary and security forces controlled by the ruling party, which further cemented their preferential treatment.
These conditions gave an administrative edge to the ruling party, creating an uneven playing field. Using the counterfactual analysis, I estimate that the legal and illegal manipulations altered the election outcome by giving the Party of Regions up to sixty-three seats. This net gain included forty-two seats obtained due to the changes in the electoral system, sixteen seats resulting from ballot invalidation, one seat from the presence of a clone candidate, and four seats from invalidated races and subsequent repeat elections. The 2012 parliamentary election was a failure of democratic standards, as President Yanukovych’s win hinged on vote irregularities, unequal access to media, the use of state security apparatus, the judiciary, and the parliament for partisan purposes. 3
The article proceeds as follows: the next section briefly discusses the evolution of electoral manipulations used by the incumbents since 2004. The 2004 presidential election constitutes a useful starting point because Ukraine has gone through the full cycle of electoral fraud—from crude manipulations employed in 2004 to largely free and fair elections in 2006 and 2007, only to return to a variety of manipulative and fraudulent techniques in 2012. The third section examines the electoral system change and its impact on weakening the opposition parties. The fourth section looks at various techniques of electoral manipulations used by the authorities—unequal access to media, the presence of candidate “clones” and “technical” parties, the role of the electoral commissions, delays in reporting results, and invalidated ballots. Even though manipulative practices were used by candidates of various political affiliations, the fourth section shows that pro-government candidates benefited disproportionally from these manipulations. The fifth section estimates the net gain from electoral manipulations that helped the pro-presidential party win the plurality of the votes. The final section concludes with a discussion of implications of electoral manipulations for Ukraine’s political development and for consolidation of democracy.
Evolution of Electoral Manipulations
Ukrainian authorities have used manipulative techniques during elections in the past, but reports of outright fraud were uncommon prior to 2004. Paul D’Anieri shows that the tactics of electoral dominance in pre-2004 Ukraine were the result of power politics and the supremacy of the executive branch. 4 The executive was able to use indirect means to influence voters through patronage and control of government jobs. The presence of the mixed SMD-PR electoral system also seems to have had an effect on his ability to manipulate the results. It was easier to affect the election outcome in the SMD races because the result could be skewed by marginal dominance in individual precincts.
The magnitude of fraud during the 2004 presidential election was staggering. Existing studies have documented a range of tactics used on election day. Among them are ballot stuffing, falsification of official protocols, bribing voters, interception and manipulation of the data through the Central Election Commission servers, and transportation of voters from one precinct to another for illegal voting multiple times. These and other fraudulent tactics were widespread. 5 Myagkov et al. uncover irregularities between voter turnout and candidate vote share using the official returns from the 2004 election. 6 Comparing data from the election’s second and third rounds, they find evidence that Yanukovych’s ballots were fraudulently cast in the second round while the fraud was mitigated in the third round because of close international and domestic scrutiny.
The 2006 and 2007 parliamentary elections took place under a different electoral formula 7 and both international and domestic observers found the election to be largely free and fair. 8 A possible explanation for “disappearance of fraud” was a higher level of competitiveness, which was the result of institutional reform adopted during the 2004 election. 9
Many of the fraudulent tactics employed in the 2004 presidential election were not used during the 2012 election. The authorities avoided using cruder types of fraud—“electoral tourism,” massive absentee voting, and “carousels”—described in detail by Andrew Wilson. 10 High degree of international scrutiny and lessons learned in 2004 by the Yanukovych’s campaign, helped avoid outright fraud on election day. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) positively assessed the voting process on election day but criticized “the lack of a level playing field, caused . . . by the abuse of administrative resources, the lack of transparency of campaign and party financing, and the lack of balanced media coverage.” 11 It appears that armed with knowledge of possible repercussions, the authorities undertook actions to skew the playing field prior to the election and after the polls were closed. The next section considers two mechanisms that helped the ruling party preserve control over the legislature: electoral system change and political prosecutions.
The Electoral System Change
Victor Yanukovych’s victorious presidential campaign in 2010 put him in a position to remove the limits on the executive and revoke the 2004 institutional reforms, thus shifting the balance of power from the parliament back to the executive. He established control over the legislature and created loyalty in the court system. In 2010, the Constitutional Court controlled by the president 12 invalidated the electoral reform of 2004 and returned power to the presidency, as defined by the 1996 constitution. 13
The control over the parliament’s majority and the judicial system allowed Yanukovych to introduce changes in the electoral system and reverse the compromise reached by the elites during the 2004 reform passed in the wake of the Orange Revolution. The most important change was a return to the mixed electoral system, where half of the members of parliament (MPs) are elected in single-member districts (SMDs) and the other half by party lists—through proportional representation (PR). 14 The electoral threshold for political parties was increased from 3 to 5 percent and the choice “against all” was removed from the ballots. 15 The mixed SMD-PR system was used in the past, during the 1998 and 2002 parliamentary elections, and it was intended to produce stronger and less fragmented party system—the main benefits of the PR system—and to provide incentives for parties to create coalitions—the benefits of the SMD tier. In spite of this, the new rules governing the 1998 and 2002 elections realized neither of these goals and arguably captured “the worst of each system.” 16
The electoral system change cannot be called an outright manipulation because it was done within the legal framework and, most importantly, it was supported by the opposition. But the impetus for electoral system change came from the decline of the president’s popularity. Public opinion polls conducted between April 2010 and October 2011 indicated that the level of support for Yanukovych declined from 41 percent in April 2010 to 11 percent in October 2011. 17 The erosion of support for the president also meant falling support for the ruling party, because electoral fortunes of the Party of Regions have been interrelated with president’s rating. 18
Yanukovych’s monopoly of power was also solidified after the imprisonment of his main political rival and most prominent opposition politician, Yulia Tymoshenko, on the charges of abuse of office. Tymoshenko’s sentencing to seven years in prison was the final, yet most significant, stroke of selective justice by the court system, which launched criminal cases against Yanukovych’s political opponents. In addition to the high-profile case against Tymoshenko, the regime also opened criminal cases against former Tymoshenko government officials. 19 By jailing the most prominent opposition leaders, the ruling party undermined both the participatory and competitive dimensions of democracy. Tymoshenko and Lutsenko were denied the right to vote and run for office, and the strength of the opposition parties was compromised. International observers criticized the election even before the campaigning began, denouncing selective justice and politically motivated charges. 20
The ability of the executive to reverse the institutional reforms of 2004 and consolidate the power of the presidency reopened the door to fraud in the 2012 election and had a profound impact on the outcome. The electoral system change was not a case of outright fraud but it weakened the opposition parties and enabled the fraud that kept an ostensibly unpopular government in power.
Manipulations and Fraud in the 2012 Election
This section examines illegal techniques employed by the incumbent party during the 2012 election. Among the most prominent techniques were denying the opposition candidates access to the media, “cloning” candidates, using “technical” or “proxy” parties to split the vote of the opposition and to crowd out the electoral commissions, and stealing, damaging, and invalidating ballots to guarantee success in closely contested races. Some of these manipulations, such as changes of the rules for selecting election commission membership, the creation of “technical” or “spoiler” parties, took place before the election. Other techniques, such as the delayed reporting of the results and damaging and invalidating the ballots, were deployed on or after election day. The latter resembled more blatant and crude cases of vote manipulations and outright fraud. The combination of these methods effectively skewed the playing field, weakened the opposition, and gave a disproportionate advantage to the incumbent party, keeping it in power.
Access to Media
One of the central areas of contestation in hybrid regimes is the media system. The ruling party brought much of the media space under its tight control prior to the election. The distribution of the weekly magazine Ukrainskiy Tyzhden was blocked just several weeks before the election after the magazine reported on manipulations of the media by the ruling regime. 21 TVi, one of the few independent TV channels, came under significant pressure when the state denied its digital licensing and the tax administration launched an investigation against the channel’s director, accusing him of tax evasion. 22
These attempts to suppress the independent media were combined with more subtle mechanisms of co-opting media owners and forcing them to practice self-imposed censorship. The owners of media outlets were heavily dependent on political decisions, and therefore they forced their media to impose self-censorship as a sign of support of the ruling regime. 23
The loyalty to the ruling party displayed by most media created an unfair advantage for pro-government candidates. For instance, the ruling Party of Regions received disproportionately higher shares of coverage during the election campaign. According to the study conducted by the Institute of Sociology, the government received 61 percent of media coverage in October 2012, whereas the opposition received only 30 percent of coverage. 24 The state-controlled TV channel Pershiy Natzionalniy (First National) offered the most imbalanced coverage of the government, by giving 74 percent of the airtime to representatives of the governing coalition. Table 1 shows the differences in live coverage between the government and the opposition on major TV channels.
Media Coverage of Ukrainian Politicians
Source: “Monitoring of Political News: Main Results,” Ukrainian Press Academy and the Institute of Sociology at the National Academy of Sociology of Ukraine, http://www.aup.com.ua/uploads/4weekoctober.pdf (accessed 25 February 2012).
Table 1 indicates that three weeks before the election the opposition candidates received a disproportionately lower amount of airtime on all major TV channels. Only 16 percent of airtime was given to opposition candidates, whereas the share for the pro-government candidates was an astounding 69 percent. The largest imbalance in coverage was recorded on channels 1+1 and Ukraina, as pro-government candidates received 84 and 82 percent of the airtime, respectively. Even an independent TVi channel showed a disadvantage for the opposition in media access. Only 13 percent of airtime was given to the opposition whereas the government candidates received 84 percent of airtime.
One week before the election only three channels—Inter, TVi, and Channel 5—offered more or less balanced airtime to the politicians of the government and the opposition but, overall, the media coverage imbalance was overwhelming during the campaign.
Cloning Candidates
The parties used several “gray” technologies to promote their candidates. 25 In highly contested races, especially in the City of Kyiv and in Kyivska Oblast, large numbers of “technical” candidates were used. Technical are candidates who do not have a chance of winning and whose primary purpose is to weaken positions and split the vote of the frontrunners, or to sell their representation in the election commissions to the authorities. Frequently, technical candidates ran in the regions where they did not reside and to which they had no ties whatsoever. The strategy of using “technical” candidates proved efficient and it was deployed during the repeat election held on 15 December 2013 in five SMD races. 26
Another type of gray technology used to weaken the most prominent candidates was the use of “clones”—candidates with similar last names. The technique of “cloning” candidates was actively used by the authorities during the 2002 parliamentary election in Ukraine in order to confuse voters and to draw votes away from popular politicians. 27 There were no cases of “party cloning,” similar to those that diluted the votes for Victor Yuschenko’s Our Ukraine coalition in 2002. 28 However, an independent candidate, Oleksandr Buhanevych, registered a nongovernmental organization “Unity for Batkivshchyna,” and used the well-recognized brand of Batkivshchyna (Fatherland Party) to promote himself in district 189 (Khmelnytska Oblast). He finished third with 16,488 votes in a very tight race where the first two candidates won 18,509 votes and 17,766 votes, respectively. 29
The evidence from the 2012 election suggests that clone candidates were ubiquitously used by the authorities to benefit the candidates of various political parties. Candidate clones were present in races against all political forces—the incumbent party, the opposition parties, and independent candidates—and no political party can be singled out as the most frequent abuser of this technique. 30 Candidates from the opposition parties faced clone candidates more frequently (eight races) than candidates from the ruling Party of Regions and People’s Party (seven races combined). Independent candidates faced clones most frequently (thirteen races). For example, Anatoliy Grytsyuk, Batkivshchyna candidate in district 23, faced an independent Andriy Grytsyuk. 31 The latter candidate—the clone—registered ten days after the former, and won more than 4,500 votes. 32 In district 191, an independent Victor Bondar won the race by a margin of 4,000 votes. In addition to competing with his main opponent from the Party of Regions, Bondar was facing another Victor Bondar who diverted more than 2,000 votes from him. In a different race, another pair of candidates with the exact same name—Vasyl Shpak—won more than 12,500 votes together, with the clone diverting more than 3,000 votes from the real candidate. 33 In both instances, the share of votes diverted by clones was not sufficient to affect the outcome of each race.
Overall, clones were present in 32 of 225 single-member district (SMD) races. 34 In twelve of thirty-two races where clones were present, they withdrew from the races before election day. It does not appear, however, that the withdrawal of clones disproportionally benefited the opposition or the incumbents. Had clone candidates stayed on the ballot, they would have split the vote of real candidates and benefited candidates from the Party of Regions in four races, opposition candidates in three races, and independent candidates in four races. Table 2 presents the summary of twenty races where clone candidates stayed on ballots.
Clone Candidates and their Impact in Single-Member District Races
Source: Central Election Commission, www.cvk.gov.ua and author’s calculations.
Note: The positive number in the last column shows the margin of victory between the real candidate, who finished first, and the runner-up. The negative number means that the real candidate finished behind the winner and the number shows how many votes the real candidate lacked to win the race. Party Abbreviations: Svoboda (Freedom); Batkivscchyna (Motherland); CPU (Communist Party of Ukraine); UDAR (Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reforms); Narodna Partia (People’s Party).
Candidate ran as independent but joined the Party of Regions faction or consistently voted with the Party of Regions.
The outcome in the SMD 92 was the only one that was altered because of the presence of a clone candidate.
The race was a repeat election held on 15 December 2013 because the results of the regular election were canceled as a result of massive fraud.
In these twenty races, the clone candidates were used to dilute the vote of all parties. Overall, the clones took away close to 45,000 votes. Their level of support varied from under 1 to 17 percent. Even though the use of this technology altered the outcome of only one race (SMD 92), the distribution of votes in other races was severely skewed. The head of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine also suggested that the real magnitude of candidate “doubles” was insignificant, even though the technique was widely criticized in the media. On average, clone candidates won 2,248 votes. There were twenty-one races where the margins of victory were less than this amount, yet clones were not present. Had clone candidates been present in these races, they could have dramatically altered the outcome and thus cost the real candidate the victory. At first glance, it seems that no political party benefited more than others from using clones. But on closer examination, the primary beneficiaries from the presence of clone candidates were the candidates affiliated with the ruling party rather than the opposition or the independent candidates. Overall, twelve of twenty SMD races presented in Table 2 were won by the candidates nominated by the ruling party or independents who were co-opted by the ruling party.
In seven races where clones diluted the vote, real candidates finished second but the margins of victory between these candidates and the winners were quite significant. Therefore, we cannot conclude that the clones had a detrimental impact on the real candidates’ electoral fortunes. When real candidates finished second, the presence of clone candidates had the strongest potential for changing the race outcome in district 92 (Kyivska Oblast). In this race, Batkivshchyna’s candidate, Victor Svitovenko, finished second losing 2,726 votes to the Party of Regions candidate. Another Svitovenko—Maksym—was also running in the district as an independent and received 1,998 votes. The combined vote shares of both Svitovenko candidates—33,320 votes—would have still been short of the 34,048 votes received by the Party of Regions candidate who won the race. However, the conjunction of gray techniques seems to have worked in favor of the ruling party candidate. In addition to the votes lost due to the presence of the clone, 2,820 ballots were invalidated. If we assume that ballots were deliberately damaged and invalidated, the combination of clone candidates, ballot invalidation, and higher than average number of registered candidates (twenty-four) that helped fragment the vote, could have cost the victory for the runner-up. 35
In six races, the presence of clone candidates alone was not sufficient to deprive the real candidate of victory. However, on three occasions, the margins of victory were smaller than the combined share of votes distorted by clones, the number of invalidated ballots, and the share of absentee votes. 36 Though these measures would have had to work against the winners to alter the outcomes of the races, the mechanism of cloning candidates was an effective strategy to divert the votes from real candidates.
A detailed analysis of these races indicates that even though the impact of clones was marginal, the presence of clones significantly affected the distribution of votes. Of course, margins of victory in single-member races are not as important as in proportional representation tier because even a victory by a small margin guarantees the candidate a parliamentary seat. While the distribution of votes was marginally important in the SMD races, the fairness and transparency of races are essential elements of democratic systems, and these elements were compromised through the use of clones. Detecting and preventing these abuses should, therefore, be among the central concerns for international observers and policy makers.
Technical Parties and Electoral Commissions
Whereas the use of clone candidates was widespread in many SMD races, the PR campaigns were marked by the presence of “technical” or “proxy” parties. These parties were artificial organizations covertly recruited and financed by one of the main parties in order to take the votes away from the opponents and damage their chances of winning voter support. Henry Hale has suggested that candidates of different political hues used this technique during the 2010 presidential election. 37 In 2012, the evidence indicates that Natalia Korolevska’s party, Ukraine Forward (Ukraina Vpered), was perhaps the most prominent technical party used by the ruling elites to confuse voters and to draw votes away from the opposition parties. The party was built on the personality of Korolevska, who was seen by many Ukrainians as a replacement of the jailed Yulia Tymoshenko and as a fierce opposition figure to Victor Yanukovych’s semi-authoritarian regime. Yet, the evidence suggests that Ukraine Forward was a project of the incumbent party designed to attract voters seeking new personalities in politics and split the vote of the opposition parties. 38 An ultimate indication of Korolevska’s coordination with the ruling party was her appointment as Minister of Social Policy in the new cabinet. As for Ukraine Forward, it did poorly at the polls having received less than 2 percent of the vote and failing to clear the electoral threshold. It is likely that Ukraine Forward diverted most of its 300,000 votes away from UDAR. Overall, while the presence of Ukraine Forward was not detrimental to the presence in parliament of any opposition party, the latter could have gained additional six to eight parliamentary seats, had the technical party not participated in the election.
The authorities also used other technical parties to crowd out the District Election Commissions (DECs) with representatives loyal to the incumbent party and to deny representation in the DECs to the opposition parties. The incumbent party established control of election commissions by injecting a large number of representatives of unknown and electorally irrelevant political parties into DECs.
According to the Ukrainian election legislature, the eighteen-member DECs included representatives from each of the five Rada factions. 39 The rest of the DEC seats were selected using a random drawing from the pool of all political parties that nominated at least one candidate in the PR or in the SMD races. Whereas several parties participating in the drawing were legitimate organizations with established histories, staff, and electoral platforms, only twenty-two of the eighty-seven parties registered by the Central Election Commission (CEC) nominated candidates in the PR tier. 40 For the rest, it was enough to nominate a single candidate in any SMD race to be eligible to participate in the random drawing in all 225 races. For example, political parties Youth to Power (Molod do Vlady), Fraternity (Bratstvo), and United Rus (Rus Yedyna) nominated five SMD candidates combined, yet received representation in all 225 DECs. They nominated no candidates in the PR tier, and the reports of independent monitors suggest that these parties were used by the pro-government party to crowd out the space in DECs denying representation to the genuine political parties. 41 According to the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, forty-nine of eighty-seven parties participating in the drawing were controlled, financed, or taken over by the authorities. 42
Overall, fourteen of nineteen political parties selected through a random drawing nominated zero candidates in the PR tier and eleven parties nominated between one and five candidates in the SMD races. 43 Most of the parties that received representation in DECs did not have a legitimate chance of winning even 1 percent of the vote. They were registered with the primary objective to hand over their representation in the commissions to the ruling party in exchange for a financial reward. In other words, these parties were technical, or proxy. They were yet another gray technology used by the ruling elites to deny the opposition the ability to defend the election result.
One of the outcomes of the random drawing that benefited the incumbent president’s party was that two opposition parties—UDAR and Svoboda—did not receive a single representative in the DECs. Under usual circumstances, such a result would not raise questions about the legitimacy of the procedure since any political party could be excluded from representation as a result of random drawing. However, it is the change in the procedure of random drawing made by the CEC just five days prior to the drawing that delegitimized the exclusion of the opposition parties. The random drawing was held only once for all 225 DECs, contrary to the rules used in electoral campaigns from 1998 to 2007. During that time, the random drawing was done for each DEC to ensure equal opportunities for all political parties and candidates. Days before random drawing, the CEC changed the process of formation of DECs by having one single drawing for all 225 DECs. Political parties could either win representation in all 225 DECs or none at all. As a result, only twenty-one out of eighty-seven political parties received representation in DECs. This ad hoc change of the rules and the “all or nothing” approach helped the authorities exclude two prominent opposition parties from representation in the DECs and denied the opposition the ability to monitor the vote counting process and defend the results. 44
The procedure of creating the Precinct Election Commissions was very similar to the way how DECs were formed. On 17 May 2012, the Central Election Commission confirmed that the PECs would be created based on a random drawing at the level of precincts. Only five days before the drawing, the CEC changed its decision mandating that the random drawing be done at each of the 225 districts rather than at each of the 33,646 precincts. In other words, after having established control over DECs, the authorities sought to extend their control over all the PECs.
The large number of PECs required an overwhelming number of members willing to serve on commissions. The authorities used the identities of sick, disabled, and dead citizens who were not aware that their names were used and hence not willing or able to work in the PECs under the fraudulent schemes. An anecdotal piece of evidence was a case in the town of Terebovlya, where a citizen who died in 2010 was nevertheless included in the lists of PECs on behalf of six political parties. 45
The artificial nature of technical parties became more evident after a series of rotations in the membership of DECs. Just two weeks after the DECs were formed, political parties replaced 1,972 out of 4,050 DEC representatives (49 percent). 46 By the time of the election, parties replaced 2,349 (58 percent) of their members. Most frequent rotations occurred among the leadership of the commissions. According to the reports by Tsifra, an organization monitoring the election, political parties replaced 81 percent of the DEC heads, 58 percent of deputy heads, 71 percent of the secretaries, and 56 percent of regular members of the commissions. 47 Five parliamentary parties changed only 4 percent of their representatives. Meanwhile, six technical parties—United Rus, Fraternity, Russian Bloc, Russian Unity, Union of Anarchists of Ukraine, and United Family—replaced their representatives in DECs at least once and sometimes multiple times. 48 While the number of rotations is not crucial for transparency of the election process, it shows that parties engaged in significant rotations were superficial organizations created to crowd out the electoral commissions.
Delayed Results
An important component of manipulating the election results was a delay in publishing the count, which allowed time to alter the reports, initiate vote recounts, and ultimately to invalidate ballots. Given other violations committed against the opposition candidates, it is plausible that votes were invalidated in favor of pro-government candidates. However, we cannot accept that conclusion without evidence. After all, as the results of races with the presence of candidate clones suggest, either pro-government or opposition candidates could have benefited from the clone presence. It is therefore important to look at other abnormalities in races where the number of invalidated ballots exceeded the margins of victory.
The delays in reporting the vote count suggest that it was a purposeful technique used to alter undesirable outcomes in strongholds of the opposition. Whereas the results from Eastern and Southern regions were reported according to schedule, the results from Western, Northern, and Central regions arrived with significant delays. By the evening time on 29 October, one day after the election, with 78.77 percent of the ballots processed in Ukraine, the averages of processed ballots for Eastern and Southern regions were 93.7 and 87.4 percent, respectively, whereas the share of processed ballots in Western, Central, and Northern regions constituted 77.7, 60.2, and 68.5 percent, respectively. 49
Early reporting in the East and the South was not surprising given that those were the strongholds of the incumbent party. The combination of extensive use of administrative resources and complete control established over the election commissions (and thereby over the vote counting process) made it easier to eliminate the opposition candidates from the electoral field prior to election day. As a result, the races in the East had fewer candidates and larger margins of victory between winners and runner-ups compared to other parts of Ukraine. 50 Overall, the races in the East were less competitive and the victories of pro-government candidates could have been easily anticipated. The races in the Western and Central regions, on the other hand, were more competitive and showed higher electoral turnouts and larger support for the opposition candidates, which seemed to compel the heads of the District Election Commissions to deliberately delay reporting of the results.
Ballot Invalidation
One of the reported cases of voter fraud was deliberate damage of ballots by PEC members before handing out the ballots to the voters. Blogs and web live journals were abundant sources of reporting on this type of fraud. 51 However, the main mechanism of falsifying results at the DEC level was invalidation of damaged ballots. For example, the outcome in election district 14 (Vinnytska Oblast) seems to be the result of post-election manipulations. An independent Victor Zherebnyuk was announced the winner by an eighty-three-vote margin against the opposition candidate Ivan Melnychyuk (Batkivshchyna). The recount of ballots requested by Zherebnyuk’s representatives uncovered damaged ballots predominantly in boxes containing Melnychyuk’s ballots. The CEC invalidated 3,128 ballots, most of which were cast for Melnychyuk, and in turn cost the opposition candidate the victory. The official data indicate that 3,128 ballots were invalidated in district 14, while the margin of victory was only eighty-three votes. 52 This example of vote invalidation occurred in the race in Central Ukraine but the largest shares of invalid ballots were found in Eastern and Southern Ukraine, and the smallest shares of invalid ballots were in Western and Central Ukraine. 53 Overall, 409,068 ballots were found invalid in proportional representation races and 783,308 ballots were invalidated in 225 SMD races. 54 Figure 1 shows twenty electoral districts—ten with the smallest and ten the largest shares of invalid ballots in the SMD races. 55
Electoral districts and regions (oblast) with the largest and the smallest shares of invalid ballots
Figure 1 demonstrates that electoral districts in Western and Central Ukraine were least prone to invalidating the ballots, despite a concerted effort by the authorities to delay the results in the strongholds of the opposition and potentially to invalidate the votes. Similarly, districts with the lowest shares of invalid ballots were won by the opposition candidates (Batkivshchyna and Svoboda won six and two races, respectively) and independent candidates (two victories). On the other hand, districts in Eastern and Southern Ukraine, which have been dominated by the Party of Regions, were engaged in voter fraud more frequently and at higher rates than their counterparts in Western and Central Ukraine. Party of Regions’ candidates won eight of ten districts in these parts of Ukraine with largest shares of invalid ballots, and the shares of invalid ballots in these regions ranged from 3,430 to 9,864.
Even though not every district with a large share of invalid ballots was competitive enough to alter the results of the race, in twenty-seven SMD races the number of invalid ballots was larger than the margins of victory. In ten more races, the margins of victory were only insignificantly larger than the number of invalidated ballots (less than one thousand votes). In other words, the results in these thirty-seven races could have been different if ballots were not damaged and invalided. Table 3 lists the descriptive statistics of thirty-seven districts where the race outcomes could have been altered because of invalided ballots.
Invalid Ballots and Margins of Victory in Thirty-Seven SMD Races
Source: Data from Central Election Commission’s website and author’s computations.
Note: n = 37. The negative number in the means column indicates that the number of invalid votes was larger than the margin of victory.
Table 3 shows that on average, 4,613 ballots were invalidated in thirty-seven SMD districts, whereas the mean margin of victory was just over 2,231 votes. Three of five races whose results were later invalidated were among these races. 56 Even though pro-government, opposition, and independent candidates enjoyed victories in these races, candidates affiliated with the Party of Regions benefited disproportionally in districts reporting high shares of invalidated votes; they won sixteen districts versus eleven and seven won by the opposition and independents, respectively. 57
Relationship between Electoral Turnout and Vote Share
There were other abnormalities in the thirty-seven races mentioned above, which point to the presence of fraud. One way to assess the beneficiaries of invalidated ballots is to analyze the relationship between vote share and turnout. If ballots were damaged and invalidated deliberately, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to establish which candidates’ names were originally marked on invalidated ballots. But we can look at vote distribution in electoral districts and try to identify whether some candidates particularly benefited from or were disadvantaged because of vote distribution. 58
Studies of electoral irregularities have noted that the relationship between turnout and a candidate’s vote share should be logical in that as turnout increases a candidate should receive a proportional share in that increase. 59 At the same time, if a candidate’s vote share is positively or negatively correlated with turnout, we can suspect that ballots were either stuffed in the candidate’s favor or stolen from the candidate. Of course, strong positive correlation between a candidate’s vote share and turnout can be due to alternative reasons. 60 Not every spike in turnout combined with increased support for a particular candidate is a result of fraudulent activities and, therefore, Maygkov et al. warn that we need to look at other indicators that support evidence of fraud. 61
In order to substantiate the suspicion of irregularities, I identified electoral districts that reported larger numbers of invalidated ballots than margins of victory or where that difference was insignificant (less than one thousand votes). In other words, large shares of invalidated ballots served as a useful starting point for further scrutiny. Next, I used bivariate correlations to examine the relationships between turnout and vote share of candidates in each of the thirty-seven SMD races. 62
The vote share of the Party of Regions candidates was positively correlated with turnout in twenty-one of thirty-seven districts. 63 Meanwhile, the vote shares of the opposition candidates positively correlate with the turnout only in three races, but overwhelmingly, the relationship between the opposition candidate vote share and turnout is negative. Positive correlation between candidate vote share and turnout is found only in races in which the opposition candidates were not competitive; in these races, independent candidates who ran against pro-government candidates were the ones who were losing votes proportionally to the turnout increase, as vote shares of these independent candidates indicated a negative correlation with the turnout. These findings suggest that it is very likely that the vote share was artificially increased to benefit pro-government candidates. In the majority of cases, it was the Party of Regions’ candidates or independents who benefited from this pattern. It is plausible to suspect the reduction of vote share was produced by vote invalidation. 64
Looking at invalidated ballots in thirty-seven questionable SMD races, pro-government candidates could have benefited from invalidated votes in sixteen races, whereas the opposition candidates and independents could have benefited from invalidated votes in eleven and seven races, respectively. The correlation coefficients indicate that fourteen of sixteen districts won by pro-government candidates reported high positive and statistically significant correlations between their vote share and turnout. However, only a single district won by the opposition (the City of Kyiv, district 216) showed positive and statistically significant correlation with turnout. Therefore, if there is suspicion that ballots were invalidated to benefit the opposition candidates, the evidence suggests that the opposition candidates were winning in spite of, rather than because of, invalidated votes. The opposition candidates were not benefiting from higher turnout even in regions where they were the “favorite sons”—in Western and Central Ukraine. However, it seems that candidates affiliated with the governing party received high voter support in high-turnout precincts regardless of their geographic location. Such vote distribution suggests that the mechanisms responsible for voter support of opposition candidates and pro-government candidates were different. In the next section, I argue that this difference in electoral behavior was achieved by more frequently invalidating ballots cast for the opposition candidates.
Invalidated Results and Repeat Elections
The crudest cases of fraud were the invalidation of election results in five SMD races. 65 The opposition candidates were leading in all five races but the damaged ballots, as well as fraudulent actions by the local authorities—the police, the riot police, and the judiciary—undermined the integrity of the races, and forced the opposition candidates into repeat elections.
Victor Romaniuk (Batkivschyna) was leading in the SMD 94 by a margin of 9,661 votes with 97 percent of ballots counted. His opponent from the Party of Regions filed twenty-eight lawsuits demanding a recount, followed by invalidation of 33,000 ballots, which cost the opposition candidate a victory.
Arkadiy Karnatskiy (Batkivschyna) was announced the winner in the SMD 132 by a 4,189-vote margin only to see the reversal of the outcome because of “corrections” in final vote tallies. “Corrections” were only done in favor of the pro-presidential candidate. Between 7
Yuriy Levchenko (Svoboda) won the SMD 223 by a 930-vote margin but Svoboda’s representatives had to engage in a physical confrontation with a group of thugs-turned-journalists who had journalist IDs but could not answer questions about the media they represented. 66 After perpetual vote recounts and confrontations, the opposition candidate was announced to have lost the race.
In a similar fashion, after confrontations with riot police, Leonid Datsenko’s 4,672-vote victory margin turned into a loss in the SMD 197. Finally, Mykola Bulatetski’s victory margin of 12,000 votes was reversed after the final vote tally was destroyed by the DEC’s head in the SMD 194. 67 Both candidates represented the opposition party Batkivschyna, and the observer reports suggest that both victories were stolen.
These five cases of annulment of results clearly benefited candidates affiliated with the Party of Regions. In none of the five races the recounts favored the opposition candidates. Once the vote tallies showed that the pro-presidential candidates were losing their races, the state’s resources were directed at reversing the outcome: the riot police was engaged to raid the buildings and steal the reports, the thugs were used to damage the ballots, the DECs delayed reporting the results and fabricated the reports, and the courts invalidated the results.
The repeat election, held on 15 December 2013, reaffirmed that manipulations and fraud had become an integral part of pro-presidential candidates’ campaign. Only one opposition candidate won the repeat election (SMD 197). The opposition candidate in SMD 94 was banned from running by the court decision and the opposition candidate in SMD 223 faced two clone candidates who diverted close to two thousand votes. Meanwhile, the Party of Regions replaced four of their five candidates and since using the ruling party’s affiliation was more a liability than a benefit, all of them ran as independents. The resulting net victory for the Party of Regions was four parliamentary seats.
The Net Gain for the Ruling Party
In order to estimate the net gain from the manipulations used by the Party of Regions during the 2012 parliamentary election, I begin with a counterfactual analysis of the electoral system change. The electoral system change was lawfully passed by the Rada and, more importantly, was supported by the opposition, and therefore it would be incorrect to call it fraudulent. However, the electoral system change had the unintended consequence of opening the door to significant manipulations in the SMD races. It is therefore imperative to consider its impact on the overall outcome. The counterfactual helps examine what the distribution of seats would have looked like had the election been held by the old rules, that is, under pure PR formula.
Five parliamentary parties received 93.12 percent of the vote, with only 7 percent going to smaller parties, which essentially became the “lost votes.” As Table 4 shows, under the old electoral rules used in 2006 and 2007, the Party of Regions would have been the only political party disadvantaged by the pure PR electoral formula. The Communists would have been the largest beneficiaries of the PR system, as they would have doubled their seat share from thirty-two to sixty-four seats. By losing forty-two seats, the Regineers would have also lost the prospects for legislative majority, even in coalition with the Communists.
Counterfactual Analysis
Note: The “wasted votes” constitute about 7 percent of the total vote. These are the votes won by political parties that did not clear the electoral threshold.
Three opposition parties dominated the PR part of the vote in 2012 and they would have won a combined share of 241 seats (54 percent of the vote), if the election were held by the pure PR formula. This would have given the opposition enough seats to form a legislative majority. In sum, the electoral system change may have had crucial ramifications not only for vote distribution in the Rada and for the structure of parliamentary majority but also for manipulations and fraud that mostly occurred in the SMD races.
Of course, the central assumption of this exercise is ceteris paribus. The campaign could have been different had the election been held under the PR formula, and the authorities would have probably engaged in alternative forms of manipulations to compensate for the lost seats. However, given that most violations and manipulations occurred in the SMD races, it is plausible to assume that the scale of manipulations would have been much smaller under pure PR formula. Clearly, the Party of Regions disproportionally benefited from the mixed SMD-PR system, as their candidates relied heavily on the SMD races and on the support from independent candidates who were later co-opted by the Party of Regions faction in the Rada. 68
Examining the conjunction of gray technologies helps establish the full impact of manipulations. The outcome of one race was altered because of the votes distorted by a clone candidate and due to the invalidation of votes. Additionally, through a combination of diluted votes, absentee votes, and invalidated ballots, the result was skewed in favor of pro-presidential candidates in sixteen of thirty-seven SMD races (Table 5). In races won by the opposition and independent candidates, the correlation coefficients between vote share and the turnout indicate that these two categories of candidates were not benefiting from higher turnout even in the opposition strongholds. In other words, they were winning in spite of, rather than because of, invalidated votes.
Summary of Net Gains from Manipulations in SMD Races
Note: The numbers in the right column are not overlapping.
In sum, based on the summary presented in Table 5, the net gain from manipulations for the ruling party constitutes sixty-three parliamentary seats. This estimation is conditional upon the changes in the electoral system, which brought additional forty-two seats to the Party of Regions, the invalidated ballots (sixteen seats), the presence of a clone candidate (one seat), and invalidated races and subsequent repeat election (four seats). In hindsight, it seems that the electoral system change facilitated fraud during and after election day, because manipulations and crude fraud were present predominantly in the SMD races. While it is also challenging to disentangle several types of manipulations occurring in the same race, it is important to emphasize that the ruling party benefited from the conjunction of gray technologies. These calculations may be an underestimate, as they do not include the impact of manipulations with the media and electoral commissions. It is extremely difficult to estimate the net impact of these manipulations.
Discussion
The government authorities engaged in significant manipulations during the 2012 parliamentary election and undermined the opposition’s ability to compete. A combination of legal manipulations and illegal techniques helped the authorities skew the outcome. This article explores a series of manipulations and outright fraudulent techniques used by pro-presidential candidates. The analysis shows that the electoral system change had a profound effect on the composition of the Rada. Had the election taken place based on the proportional rules, the Party of Regions would have lost up to forty-two parliamentary seats and would not have been able to create the coalition government with the Communists. Moreover, the return to the mixed SMD-PR formula had unintended consequences. The reintroduction of the SMD tier opened the door to electoral manipulations, as most significant violations occurred in the SMD races. Even though the changes were done legally through the parliamentary vote and supported by the opposition parties, they disproportionally benefited the ruling party.
What do manipulations and fraud uncovered during the recent election tell us about Ukraine’s political development? Ukraine has gone through the full cycle of election fraud. The magnitude of fraud culminated in 2004 during the presidential election, declined during the 2006 and 2007 parliamentary elections, and was revived in 2012 election. The 2012 election constitutes a major departure from parliamentary elections of 2006 and 2007 that were largely free of voter fraud. The story of electoral manipulations shows that political institutions are crucial for strength and quality of democracy. The change of political institutions—curbing the power of the presidency and increased parliamentary control over the appointment of the cabinet and prime minister—constitute a legacy of the Orange Revolution and seem to be the primary explanation of the strengthening of Ukrainian democracy in 2004–2010. Similarly, the reversal of this balance since 2010 contributed to the weakening of democratic institutions.
At the same time, the institutional explanation is incomplete without accounting for the role of autocratic elites who may tilt the balance of power and endanger democracy. If we attribute the “disappearance of fraud” 69 to changes in the balance of power between the executive and the legislative branches, the return of electoral manipulations is the outcome of Yanukovych’s decision to return the lost power of the presidency. Contrary to popular expectations that Yanukovych’s presidency would mean reforms, strengthening of democracy, political stability, and closer ties to Europe, the opposite happened. 70 Yanukovych seized power, captured the institutions of the state, and subjugated the legislative and judiciary branches to the executive’s control. A series of laws restricting political rights and civil liberties passed in early 2014 with procedural violation indicates that the 2012 election fraud was not an incident but a carefully designed tool to preserve the power of the executive at all costs. In sum, Yanukovych undermined the image of a reformed democrat so carefully crafted since his defeat in the 2004 election.
What are the implications for the future of Ukrainian democracy? It is important to acknowledge that the combination of elite commitment to maintaining democratic standards and strong institutions are a necessary requirement for keeping democracy safe, whereas the former is the prerequisite for the latter. The history of independent Ukraine shows that powerful executives tend to step outside the established rules to pursue their goals of maximizing the grip on power. 71 As Yanukovych’s commitment to democratic values became more questionable over the years, it seems that the shift to a PR system would be beneficial for the Ukrainian party system and democracy in general.
The uncertain future of countries undergoing transition from post-communism prompted democratization scholars to come up with alternative names to describe “uncertain transitions.” 72 Several labels were applied to Ukraine, describing it as a case of electoral authoritarianism, 73 competitive authoritarianism, 74 delegative democracy, 75 or virtual democracy. 76 Based on the evidence presented in this article, during the 2012 parliamentary election Ukraine represented a hybrid regime type that combined elements of democracy and those of the authoritarian state. We might call this a case of electoral, or competitive, authoritarianism.
The hopeful development for Ukraine’s democracy was the growing discontent among citizens about autocratic elements of the executive. Anti-government protests in late 2013–early 2014 suggest that despite frustrations with infighting and ineffective policies of the “orange coalition,” Ukrainians mobilize to defend their rights and freedoms when democracy is in danger. Following the violent crackdowns of antigovernment protests by the police and a death toll reaching hundred lives, Yanukovych was forced out of office. The president left the country for fear of personal security and criminal investigations. In late February 2014, the Rada passed into law several bills aimed at returning to constitutional arrangements in place in 2004, limiting presidential powers. These important steps toward strengthening of democratic institutions also require a return to the pure PR formula which, as this research shows, has been less prone to electoral fraud in Ukraine than the mixed SMD-PR system. The full impact of these decisions is yet to be seen but the reversal of autocratic rules imposed by Yanukovych and curbing of presidential powers should become essential ingredients for democratic consolidation.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Beatriz Maldonado, Daniel Hicks, Mayia Shulga, Jacob Williams, Walter Wilson, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions and comments on earlier drafts of the article. All errors and omissions are those of the author.