VZCZCXRO1200
RR RUEHIK
DE RUEHKV #0231/01 0421116
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 111116Z FEB 10
FM AMEMBASSY KYIV
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 9314
INFO RUCNCIS/CIS COLLECTIVE
RUEHZG/NATO EU COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 KYIV 000231 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV UP
SUBJECT: UKRAINIAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS -- ON THE ROAD TO 
HAPPINESS AND OTHER VIGNETTES 
 
KYIV 00000231  001.2 OF 002 
 
 
SUMMARY 
------- 
 
¶1.  (SBU)  Embassy Kyiv election observers throughout Ukraine 
were uniformly impressed by the dedication of election 
workers and voters.  The intensely partisan and mudslinging 
conduct of the campaign at the national level was not 
reflected in the Precinct Election Commissions (PECs), where 
members of both parties cooperated to make the process run 
smoothly and transparently.  Observers' accounts of the 
balloting ranged from the heartwarming to the bizarre; 
perhaps the oddest incidents involved the surreptitious use 
of disappearing ink in several precincts.  End summary. 
 
 
SO, HOW'RE WE DOING? 
-------------------- 
 
¶2.  (SBU) Embassy observers were warmly greeted almost 
everywhere, with the exception of a few precincts in Odesa, 
where the attitude was standoffish or even suspicious. 
Generally, Ukrainians understood the importance of 
international observation and appreciated the level of 
interest in the transparency of their election.  In many 
places observers were offered food and liquid refreshment by 
the Precinct Election Commission (PEC).  There were many 
questions about how the U.S. conducts balloting -- and 
unsolicited offers to come and observe the next American 
elections. 
 
¶3.  (SBU) Observers were uniformly impressed by the 
seriousness of purpose both of the PECs and of the voters. 
Voters braved bitter cold and icy conditions to cast their 
ballots, even traveling to precincts by horse-drawn sleigh in 
rural areas.  Extended families came to the precincts 
together, with small children allowed to drop their 
grandparents' completed ballots into the box.  Some PECs 
(composed of eight representatives each from the two major 
parties - Yanukovych's Party of Regions and Tymoshenko's 
"Bloc Yuliya Tymoshenko") were clearly more efficient and 
professional than others.  The most striking thing, however, 
was the fact that the animosity between the two candidates at 
the national level was almost entirely absent in the PECs, 
whose members cooperated to make the process smooth and 
transparent.  Anxious PEC members sometimes sought our 
reassurance that they were doing everything correctly; PEC 
members, domestic observers, and ordinary voters often asked 
how we thought the whole process was going. 
 
¶4.  (SBU) By far the most prosperous precinct visited by the 
Ambassador and POLCOUNS was in the bedroom community of 
Shchaslyve ("Happy" or "Fortunate") between Kyiv and Boryspil 
Airport.  The village contained many large homes of 
well-to-do Ukrainians.  The voting took place in a freshly 
painted school, with new chandeliers hanging in the large 
room used for voting.  The new gymnasium next to the school 
was a huge air-inflated dome, with a raucous crowd cheering 
on a football match inside.  The PEC chairman explained that 
the community was indeed doing well, with many residents who 
worked in Kyiv and many others at Boryspil Airport. 
 
¶5.  (SBU) One of the most touching moments came in the 
Darnytsya District of Kyiv, where a man asked the Ambassador 
and POLCOUNS for assistance getting permission for his wife 
to vote by mobile ballot box.  He explained that he and his 
wife had come to the precinct earlier in the morning and that 
she had slipped on the ice outside and broken her leg.  She 
had gone to the hospital, had her leg x-rayed, had been 
fitted with a cast, and then went home to rest.  She insisted 
on voting, however, and sent her husband back to the precinct 
to ask that she be allowed to vote by mobile ballot box.  The 
PEC chairwoman explained that, unfortunately, the rules 
required that all mobile ballots be requested no later than 
the day before the election.  The man would have to go to the 
local court to get a ruling on whether his wife would be 
allowed to vote.  Clearly embarrassed by the "Catch 22" 
situation in which she found herself, the PEC chairwoman told 
the Ambassador that she had called her District Election 
Commission chairman for advice, and that the latter was on 
his way to the precinct to sort out the situation.  The 
Ambassador and POLCOUNS had to leave before the final 
decision was made, but both came away impressed with the 
determination of at least one Ukrainian woman to do her civic 
duty and vote. 
 
NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DON'T 
----------------------------- 
 
¶6.  (U) One of the curiosities of the February 7 runoff 
election was the unexplained appearance at several widely 
 
KYIV 00000231  002.2 OF 002 
 
 
separated precincts of pens with disappearing ink.  Ballots 
marked with these pens would have the ink vanish a few 
moments later, and these ballots would presumably be thrown 
out as invalid during the vote count.  The working assumption 
is that representatives of one party slipped the 
disappearing-ink pens into precincts where the other party is 
strong, hoping thereby to invalidate hundreds of votes for 
the rival candidate. 
 
¶7.  (SBU) Embassy observers were present in a precinct in 
Donetsk (Yanukovych's home region, where he received over 90% 
of the vote) when a voter brought a disappearing-ink pen to 
the PEC's attention.  He had stepped into the voting booth, 
marked his ballot, bent over to tie his shoe, and when he 
stood back up was then astonished to see that his ballot was 
blank.  He tried the pen on a piece of scrap paper and saw 
the mark disappear after a few seconds.  PEC workers found 
that the pen was the same as all the others on the outside, 
but the barrel inside it had been secretly swapped out. 
Fortunately, the voting booth with the disappearing-ink pen 
was behind a pillar and had not been used extensively, and 
the fraud was uncovered relatively early in the day.  Several 
dozen blank ballots that turned up during the counting 
process were declared invalid. 
 
¶8.  (SBU) Evidently the idea of disappearing ink occurred to 
both camps.  In Bila Tserkva, where Tymoshenko took 69% of 
the vote, the problem of disappearing ink was not discovered 
at one precinct until the counting stage, when one-quarter of 
the ballots turned out to be blank.  Embassy observers were 
treated to a "Florida 2000" exercise in which grannies on the 
PEC held ballots up to the light trying to discern voter 
intent from indentations left by the pen with the 
disappearing ink.  Local observers illuminating ballots with 
cigarette lighters barely avoided setting some of them on 
fire.  Ultimately, the PEC agreed to validate 408 of the 
original 469 "blank" ballots. 
 
TECHNICAL VIOLATION - NO CAMPAIGNING IN THE PRECINCT! 
--------------------------------------------- -------- 
 
¶9.  (SBU) During an election-observation visit to a local 
jail, Embassy observers watched as a line of female prisoners 
was brought into the voting area, which had been erected in 
the hallway of an isolation-cell row.  One of the prisoners 
was wearing a brand-new blue Yanukovych campaign shirt, which 
was strikingly bright and clean compared to the dirty clothes 
worn by the other prisoners.  The guards led her away to make 
her change after the observers noticed her. 
 
WHAT COUNTRY ARE WE IN AGAIN? 
----------------------------- 
 
¶10.  (SBU) The PEC Secretary in a Donetsk precinct had a 
cellphone with a ringtone that plays the opening bars of the 
Soviet national anthem.  It kept going off throughout the 
vote count - happily, with no apparent effect on the process. 
TEFFT