Voting from home for PoR and NUNS

A couple of days ago 'Gazeta po Kiyevski' ran a story on the current Central Election Commission - BYuT conflict, that included this:

"..Behind-the-scenes negotiations are taking place in the CEC between members of the coalition and the opposition. One of the main topics being discussed is the possibility of voters casting their votes from home, without the need for any medical certification. Representatives from PoR and "Our Ukraine" are interested in this because they both have access to 'admin-resurs'. Tymoshenko's people are against it since it is they that would suffer the consequences of any "manipulations" [that these home-votes would facilitate].

It is possible that the registration of the BYUT list will become a bargaining chip for doing away with the need for medical certificates. Tymoshenko at her press conference directly stated that similar proposals had been made to her representatives in the CEC already.

NUNS may also be interested in holding back BYUT's campaign for a while too. It was only about seven in the evening on Saturday that the NUNS party server limited itself to a dry statement just to appease Tymoshenko, calling the CEC's refusal to register BYUT "politically ordered".

Interestingly, the next day after scandal with the BYuT lists, 14 CEC members unanimously affirmed all the VR candidates from the pro-presidential mega-bloc without problem. If the "Nunsivtsi" knew how to correctly provide the required documentation, then why did they not share this information with their associates from BYUT?

The reality is such that in spite of declarations of friendship with Yulia T, the presidential team least of all wants to see her as prime minister. For this they need to gain more, or not many fewer votes than Tymoshenko, but they are fighting over one [orange] electorate.

More and more indirect facts indicate that there are certain understandings between Yushchenko and Yanukovych on the creation of wide coalition after the elections. Tymoshenko feels this and is trying to bring it out into the open. Not without reason did Yuliya T at the press conference hint several times that certain people from NUNS still seem to imagine a coalition with "Regionaly" possible."

Now today the CEC have confirmed that voters who claim to be immobile may cast their vote from home on September 30th, having merely submitted a hand-written request to do so by 28th September. Voting in the CEC was along partisan lines - 8 members supported the proposal. Opposition members had demanded that any request to vote from home should include confirmation based on any documents that would attest to the voter's infirmity.

Echoes already of the 2004 presidential election campaign, when, in total about 1.5 million absentee votes were "cast". E.g. in the town of Mykolayiv about 30% of votes were cast from home.