Ukrainian citizens vote in New York, and beyond, in Ukraine's election (11/07/04)

Ukrainian citizens vote in New York, and beyond, in Ukraine's election

by Andrew Nynka

NEW YORK - Seven hours after the last Ukrainian citizen cast a ballot here to choose the country's third president on October 31, 16 election workers sat huddled around two large wooden tables and listened carefully as the ballots were read aloud before announcing that Viktor Yushchenko had come away with a resounding victory in this election district.

The voting station at Ukraine's Consulate General in New York City closed promptly at 8 p.m. and election committee members worked into the early morning on November 1 to finish the tally of 1,986 Ukrainian citizens who voted here.

By 3:12 a.m. the regional election committee - which covered 13 states in in Northeastern U.S. - certified its count and sent the results by fax to Central Election Committee headquarters in Kyiv, announcing that Mr. Yushchenko won in this district with 1,889 votes, or 95 percent of the total. The next closest challenger was Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, who took 70 votes, roughly 3.5 percent of the total.

Results from voting in North America were released by local election committees in Canada and the United States shortly after the voting stations closed. However, there is still uncertainty regarding the overall tally as the Central Election Committee has stopped the count with several percentage points remaining.

The results from New York closely resembled those in the other three voting precincts in this country - at Ukrainian consulates in San Francisco and Chicago and the Embassy in Washington - where voters overwhelmingly chose the reform-minded candidate Mr. Yushchenko over Mr. Yanukovych.

The results from the voting stations in Canada - at the Consulate General in Toronto and the Embassy in Ottawa - also showed strong support for Mr. Yushchenko.

In the United States, the highest voter turnout came in Chicago, where 2,464 people (98.6 percent of the total) voted for Mr. Yushchenko, while 29 people voted for Mr. Yanukovych (1.2 percent). In San Fancisco 449 people cast their ballots for Mr. Yushchenko (95 percent), while 12 people (2.5 percent) voted for Mr. Yanukovych. In Washington, 447 people (88 percent) voted for Mr. Yushchenko and 24 people (4.7 percent) voted for Mr. Yanukovych.

Markian Shwec, president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, reported that voter turnout in Canada was higher than he anticipated. The statistics from Canada also showed strong support for Mr. Yushchenko. At the consulate in Toronto, 1,662 Ukrainians (94 percent) voted for Mr. Yushchenko, while Mr. Yanukovych took 62 votes (3.5 percent), while in Ottawa 245 people (86 percent) voted for Mr. Yushchenko and 26 people (9 percent) voted for Mr. Yanukovych.

A small minority of Ukrainian citizens in the United States and Canada, roughly several percentage points, voted for candidates other than Messrs. Yushchenko and Yanukovych - who are headed for a runoff election on November 21 to decide who will take over as president.

"I voted for Yushchenko. I want the world to know that I voted for Yushchenko and all of you should vote for him also," said Askold Lysyak in New York City after he left a voting booth on the Consulate's sixth floor. He opened the gold-colored curtains of the booth, one of six here, and dropped his paper ballot into a three-foot-high clear plastic urn that held the ballots until they were ready to be counted. "For the good of Ukraine," he said as he dropped his ballot.

Though the minimum age to vote in the Ukrainian election is 18, whole families nonetheless came by school bus from Trenton and Clifton, N.J. They took photographs of each other dropping ballots into the urns and were overheard asking each other where Mr. Yushchenko's name could be found on the ballot.

A handful of people here, when asked, were not as willing to reveal their choice for president and said they feared disclosing for whom they voted. "My name is not as important as what's going on inside that building," Luba said as she pointed to the four-story consulate building. "It's a very important moment in Ukraine's history," the woman said, who gave only her first name.

"I came to vote because this is an important election," said 24-year-old Philip Bogachuk, a bartender in New York City who has lived here for nine years. Mr. Bogachuk said he was concerned about voting irregularities in Ukraine and feared that pro-government forces there could use the names of unregistered citizens to cast ballots in favor of Prime Minister Yanukovych.

World and Olympic champion figure skater Viktor Petrenko also said it was an important election, so much so that he came to the Consulate in New York City to cast his vote, his first ever. He would not say which candidate won his vote: "I'm sorry but that's private - I'd rather not say."

As people packed the second floor of the Consulate building here in spurts, many were reluctant to leave immediately after casting their ballot. It seemed they wanted to savor the moment. Rarely were ballots passively dropped into one of the four urns; rather, a number of voters pushed the long, green pieces of paper through a container's narrow slot and grunted, as if to exclaim proudly, "take that."

By mid-afternoon Volodymyr Denesyuk, the deputy of the regional election committee here, scrambled up the wooden stairs to urge the growing crowd along. "Ladies and gentlemen, if you've voted please move quickly outside. There are thousands of people waiting outside - thousands." Mr. Denesyuk spent much of the day scurrying throughout the Consulate building. He had learned only that morning that his boss, Oleksander Zinchenko, the head of the election committee, was out sick.

The crowd of voters started gathering outside the consulate building a half-hour before the voting station opened. By 8 a.m. the line outside stretched approximately 100 yards west on 49th Street and was five- to six-people wide at points.

A New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority official said the number of people milling about the street had become a problem by 9:30 a.m. "This is not good. This is not good. Look at that. The buses can't even get through. Someone's gonna get hit," said Adriana Natale, the general superintendent of the city's Department of Buses.

An hour after the voting station opened, police closed 49th Street to cars, which allowed hundreds of people to linger on the street after voting. Some carried large Ukrainian flags on their shoulders while a group of seven men and women sang Ukrainian songs. Many people talked with friends outside while waiting for others to finish voting.

While the mood outside the consulate was mostly cheerful and relaxed, there were several moments when the wait on line seemed endless. Some voters grew tense and shoved each other at the narrow entrance to the four-story stone building, fearing they would not get to vote.

By 12:30 p.m. a large crowd packed tightly around the entrance to the Consulate at 240 E. 49th St. before student volunteers organized a pathway into and out of the building using blue, wooden police barricades to organize the crowd.

Roksolana Stojko-Lozynskyj, an executive board member of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, was among roughly a dozen independent election monitors who watched over the vote.

Ms. Stojko-Lozynskyj said that weeks before the election it was not certain if independent monitors would be allowed to observe the vote, though in the end a handful took shifts monitoring the vote until the very last ballot was counted.

Additionally, she expressed concern that some members of the election committee sought intentionally to confuse people waiting on the line outside of the consulate.

"We feel there was an attempt to disallow legitimate Ukrainian voters from participating in the election, and we strongly condemn that," Mrs. Stojko-Lozynskyj said.

But members of the election committee said that was not the case.

"It was a long day, some people were unhappy and yelled a little, but everyone who wanted to vote was able to vote," Mr. Denesyuk said. "Some people gave us suggestions on how to speed the process along, but we have to go by the law," he said, referring to a 67-page rulebook that outlined in detail the process his committee was required to follow.

Once the voting station here closed, election committee workers began the long and careful process of hand counting each of the 1,986 votes and crossed-checked this count against voter rolls, ballot receipts and other paperwork to ensure an accurate tally of the vote.

That process is set down by Ukrainian law and is believed to have been mirrored throughout Ukraine as well as in Ukrainian consulates and embassies around the world, where tens of millions of ballots were also tediously hand counted.

"The committee members did a wonderful job and, along with the help of some volunteers, everything went forward," Mr. Denesyuk said.

The 16 members of Mr. Denesyuk's election committee were all Ukrainian citizens who applied to the Central Election Commission in Ukraine to be members of the regional committee, said Pavel Kostyuk, the committee's secretary.

But there were small problems. "I voted for the wrong person," Vasyl Zimbitskiy told his wife after he left one of the booths set up to provide privacy for voters. "I marked the wrong spot." His wife reprimanded him, but Mr. Zimbitskiy said, "I don't have my glasses." Election committee workers allowed him to cast a new ballot, while the old one was put aside and eventually joined the unused pile that was carefully wrapped, sealed and sent back to the Central Election Committee offices in Kyiv.

Consul General Serhiy Pohoreltzev said there were Ukrainian citizens who came to the New York Consulate eager to vote but were turned away because they were not registered. Anyone who is interested in registering to vote in the November 21 runoff can still do so, and people were urged to contact the nearest Ukrainian consular office or Embassy to register, said Mr. Pohoreltzev, who voted an hour before the voting station closed, but did not say for whom he voted.

Messrs. Yanukovych and Yushchenko were not the only candidates to receive votes in North America. A small percentage of voters also chose from among the other 22 candidates on the 16-inch-long ballot. Others who got votes in North America included: Andrii Chornovil, Oleksander Omelchenko, Oleksander Yakovenko, Natalia Vitrenko, Oleksander Moroz, Dmytro Korchynskyi, Mykhailo Brodskyi, Petro Symonenko, Leonid Chernovetskyi, Serhii Komisarenko and Anatolii Kinakh. None of these candidates, however, took more than 5 percent of the vote in any precinct in North America.

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