Rada Passes Draft Election Code At First Reading

The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine has adopted at first reading the draft election code.

226 Members of Parliament with 226 votes required voted for bill No.3112-1, Ukrainian News Agency reports.

The Verkhovna Rada did not support bill No.3112 (102 votes) of Verkhovna Rada member Valerii Pysarenko.

Bill No.3112-1 drafted by Verkhovna Rada Chairperson Andriy Parubiy, Verkhovna Rada member Oleksandr Chernenko from the faction of the Solidarity Bloc of Petro Poroshenko and Verkhovna Rada member Leonid Yemets from the faction of the People's Front Party envisages parliamentary elections in 27 election regions.

Each party will have two types of party tickets: the unified party ticket in the national election constituency and party tickets in the election regions.

In the election regions voters will vote for regional party tickets and will not vote for the unified party ticket.

A voter will also have an opportunity to vote for a specific candidate from the regional party ticket.

The threshold at the parliamentary elections will be 4%.

The Central Election Commission will calculate the number of votes required for one mandate after defining parties overriding the threshold. For this the Central Election Commission will divide the total number of votes given to parties overriding 4-percent threshold by 450 - the constitutional number of members of the parliament. This will make the election quota.

Then the Central Election Commission will calculate the number of mandates for each regional party ticket of a party. The number of votes for a regional party ticket will be divided by the election quota. These mandates will be given to candidates from a regional party ticket. Places in the parliament not distributed among candidates from regional party tickets will be distributed among candidates of the party from its national party ticket.

As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, on October 19, the Verkhovna Rada rejected a new wording of bill on elections of MPs.