Saturday, January 01, 2005

Dick Swett Reports from Ukraine

I assume everybody finding this blog already is reading the Slate diary from Kyiv, so I'm only going to link to the more obscure things, like these two diary entries from my colleague, former Rep. (and former U.S. Ambassador to Denmark) Dick Swett, who also participated in the recent US-Ukraine Foundation-Association of Former Members monitoring mission. I met Dick at the Amsterdam airport, but he went to Dnipropetrovsk while I went to Odessa. You can read Dick's reports here and here. There are supposedly 3 diary entries but I only found two of them.

Dnipropetrovsk voted for Yanukovych 61-34 percent, with 5 percent voting "neither candidate" in the Dec. 26 voting. By comparison, according to the "official" results for the Nov. 21 vote, the vote was also for Yanukovych by 64-31, with 5 percent neither. Turnout was lower in December however, with 2.02 million reported as voting this last time but a reported 2.19 million last time. I don't have any analysis of whether turnout changed, or if the lower numbers are the result of less ballot-box stuffing and mobile-voter fraud.

NOTE: The link for oblast-by-oblast (region) voting results in English is here on the Central Election Commission website. Link courtesy of the Head Heeb, see link to right.

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