KIEV, October 26 (RIA Novosti) - Around 330 reports of suspected vote rigging and other violations have been received by the Ukrainian Interior Ministry by 06:00 p.m. local time (16:00 GMT) during the early parliamentary elections, the ministry's website said Sunday.
"On the day of the elections... 330 reports of incidents, related to the electoral process, have been received," the ministry's statement said.
In particular, there were about 35 reports of vote-buying, 34 reports on the distribution of campaign materials, 22 - on spoiled ballot papers, 17 - on spreading false information. There were also reports on the loss of election commissions' seals, the use of ballots outside the polling stations, and the presence of invalid ballots.
Early parliamentary elections are underway in Ukraine. Ukrainians are going to the polls to vote in 423 members of parliament — 225 of them from party lists and 198 in single-candidate constituencies. The electoral threshold has been set at five percent.
The elections are held against the background of a serious political and economic crisis in the country. The Ukrainian authorities have recognized that elections cannot be held in half of the districts of the country’s eastern regions due to the armed conflict between government troops and independence supporters of the self-proclaimed Luhansk and Donetsk people’s republics.
