Over 200 reports of voting irregularities received during parliamentary by-elections

"Most of the reports came from Luhansk and Chernihiv regions: 53 and 30, respectively. Law-enforcement agencies received 37 complaints in Kherson region, 25 in Poltava, 23 in Dnipropetrovsk, 19 in Ivano-Frankivsk and 11 in Volyn region," the report says. After checking the complaints, 25 criminal investigations were opened, seven in Chernihiv, five in Luhansk and Kherson regions each, four in Poltava and two in Dnipropetrovsk and Ivano-Frankivsk regions. "Fourteen involved alleged violations of civilian voting rights," the press release says. Some five criminal investigations were opened into alleged violations of article 158-1 (unlawful use of election ballots, ballots used to vote more than once) of the Criminal Code (in Dnipropetrovsk region one, in Luhansk and Poltava regions two), and article 158 in Ivano-Frankivsk two (for submitting false information to the Registry of voters or falsification of voting documents). There were four criminal cases opened for alleged violation of article 157 (obstructing voting or the right to take part in the electoral commission two in Luhansk and Chernihiv regions, and there were three criminal cases opened for alleged violations of article 160 (bribing voters) one each in Poltava, Kherson and Chernihiv regions. The remaining cases involved false bomb scares (four in Kherson region, one in Chernihiv region), assault (two in Chernihiv region) and destruction of property (one in Chernihiv region). One case involving the alleged use of falsified documents was opened in Luhansk region, and another case for allegedly illegally taking possession of documents (Dnipropetrovsk region). In addition, there was a criminal case opened according to article 1, para 115 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (homicide) involving the death of an election observer in Poltava. According to information supplied by the National Police of Ukraine, as of 08:00 vote counting had been completed at 944 local election stations and 389 local election commissions had sent results to district election commissions.