How Yushchenko Got Screwed

Slate has a great expose of how Yushchenko might have been denied the presidency in the recent Ukrainian vote. Now that another vote has been called for December 26, perhaps I’m flogging a dead horse, but it’s worth remembering how vote fraud happens. Like everything in Slate, the article itself is worth a read, but the specific allegations of vote frauds are worth repeating here.

1.) STATE EMPLOYEES DENIED ABSENTEE BALLOTS
State employees suspected of being opposition sympathizers were forced to hand their absentee ballot certificates to their bosses. No one is sure what happened to the ballots, but it’s quite possible that they were distributed to pro-Yanukovych voters.

2.) MYSTERIOUS NEW VOTERS
On Election Day, thousands of “registered voters” were mysteriously added. The majority were in the pro-Yanukovych eastern half of Ukraine. Approximately 5 percent of all votes cast came from these last-minute voters.

3.) “STUFFED BOXES” (stop chuckling!)
Ukraine allows invalids to cast their ballots via mobile boxes which are brought to the voter’s home. In most regions these mobile ballots made up 4 percent of the overall vote, but in the east, the figure was double that. It’s possible these mobile boxes were stuffed en route.

4.) VOTE EARLY, VOTE OFTEN
In several Yanukovych strongholds, voter turnout was suspiciously high; in the city of Donetsk, for example, it was reported as 96.3 percent.

5.) THREATS OF VIOLENCE
Contrary to Ukrainian election law, police were posted at polling places and scared away potential Yushchenko voters with threats of violence.

6.) OBSERVERS CHASED OFF
Observers enlisted by the opposition were expelled from numerous polling sites, giving the cops free rein to intimidate and other hanky-panky to happen unnoticed.

7.) WHO COUNTED THE VOTES?
Stalin once said that it doesn’t matter who casts the votes—it matters who counts the votes. The Central Election Commission refused to let international observers tabulate the votes. The ostensibly nonpartisan agency hasn’t been able to come up with a figure for how many absentee certificates were issued and has not released voting figures for individual polling stations.

8.) PUTIN-STYLE MEDIA OWNERSHIP
Finally, remember that Yushchenko was up against State-owned media. Newscasts, for example, were stacked with unfavorable coverage of the opposition, and immediately after the first televised debate, a state-owned television station followed with a “roundtable discussion” with no pro-Yushchenko commentators.