Currently, the parliament is working on preparing comprehensive changes to the electoral legislation, taking into account the conditions of the special period and the post-war time. For this purpose, a Working Group on the preparation of legislative proposals regarding the organization and conduct of elections has been established in the Verkhovna Rada, as reported by the Verkhovna Rada, according to UNN.
Within the framework of the Working Group's activities, seven subgroups have been formed, which are working on separate areas: election administration, security, ensuring the electoral rights of military personnel, participation of citizens abroad, information support, and fulfillment of Ukraine's international obligations.
In parallel, the Central Election Commission has prepared a draft law on the peculiarities of organizing and conducting nationwide elections after the termination or cancellation of martial law. The proposals developed by the CEC were submitted to the Working Group of the Verkhovna Rada for further processing and consideration during the preparation of changes to the electoral legislation.
A separate subgroup, which deals with issues of internally displaced persons, temporarily occupied and frontline territories, is headed by people's deputies Vitaliy Bezgin and Tamila Tasheva. This subgroup analyzes the mechanisms for ensuring the electoral rights of IDPs.
In a comment to UNN, Vitaliy Bezgin spoke about how the Central Election Commission's developments became the basis for the future draft law. According to him, the CEC's proposals almost completely coincide with the position of the members of the Working Group.
I can judge by our subgroup. Approximately 95% of the CEC's proposals correspond to the positions of the members of our subgroup. There are some specific things that concern, for example, changing the electoral address for representatives of temporarily occupied territories, but these are exclusively specific changes. In general, the draft law prepared by the Central Election Commission is very high quality
Separately, the people's deputy focused on the issue of the possibility of internally displaced persons voting. He noted that the state has tools to solve key problems, in particular regarding the identification of the actual place of residence of IDPs.
The key problem will be with the identification of their place of residence. There are very good proposals from the Central Election Commission regarding the use of data from the Ministry of Social Policy to change the electoral address. We checked the technical possibility together with the Ministry of Social Policy and the Ministry of Digital Transformation – it exists, so the state will update the data
Also, according to Vitaliy Bezgin, the current legislation already provides for the possibility for citizens to independently change their electoral address, which significantly simplifies the participation of IDPs in nationwide elections.
In addition, any Ukrainian can change their electoral address for voting. Therefore, I do not see serious obstacles for IDPs to vote in nationwide elections
At the same time, the issue of internally displaced persons' participation in local elections will require separate refinement, because, as the deputy noted, in this case it is more difficult to determine the community in which the voting should take place.
"Regarding local elections, this issue will be discussed later, as it is more difficult to determine where exactly the IDP will vote."
It will be recalled that the Central Election Commission developed proposals for holding elections after the termination of martial law in Ukraine. It is primarily proposed to hold presidential elections six months after the cancellation of martial law.