The 2020 Ukraine local elections were effectively organized amid the COVID-19 pandemic and proved more inclusive, but further improvements are required to strengthen the capacity of the election administration and oversight of campaign rules, including related to campaign financing and media coverage. These were some of the main conclusions from the final report on the elections held on 25 October 2020, as published by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR).

The report offers 39 recommendations to improve the conduct of elections and increase the transparency of and public confidence in the electoral process.

Recommendations

Key recommendations include:

• Continuing the reform of the electoral legal framework, in an open and inclusive manner, to address remaining gaps, errors, and conflicting and ambiguous formulations

• Introducing additional mechanisms for recruitment of election commission members, such as professional selection criteria, compulsory training, a national register and higher remuneration

• Ensuring that law-enforcement bodies investigate allegations of payments from candidates and parties to commissioners

• Safeguarding the stability and independence of the election administration by introducing deadlines and provisions on clear and restrictive grounds for the replacement of election commission members

• Further strengthening legislation to provide for effective and proportionate sanctions for campaign violations, including circumvention of campaign-finance regulations, misuse of administrative resources and vote-buying

• Monitoring compliance with campaign finance regulations by mandating an independent body with regional representation with sufficient authority and resources to effectively fulfill this task

• Extending the deadlines for address change requests and increasing outreach related to this procedure

• Enforcing the gender quota for candidate lists at all stages of the electoral process, including during nomination and registration

• Strengthening the capacity of the media regulator to approve sanctions for violations during election campaigns

• Ensuring that all infringements on the freedom of the media are investigated and addressed, and that the law is applied in a consistent and effective manner

• Reviewing legal provisions governing the invalidation of election results and recounts

ODIHR deployed a Limited Election Observation Mission on 21 September 2020 to observe the local elections. All 57 countries across the OSCE region have formally committed to follow up promptly on ODIHR’s election assessments and recommendations.