Elections in Ukraine are generally administered by a three-level election management system consisting of the Central Election Commission (CEC), 225 district election commissions (DECs) and approximately 30,000 precinct election commissions (PECs), each operating one polling station. The 2014 snap parliamentary elections were administered by 29,786 PECs, including 112 PECs abroad at diplomatic institutions, while the 2014 early presidential elections had 33,788 PECs.

The CEC has overall authority for planning, regulating and overseeing national elections. It is composed of 17 members, who are appointed by the Parliament based on the President’s proposals for a seven-year tenure each, with the possibility of re-election for new terms. Before suggesting the names of CEC members, the President is required to hold consultations with political party factions in the Parliament.

The extension of the CEC composition from 15 to 17 members was done in September 2018 in a swift legislative move that is currently being challenged in court for potentially violating the parliament’s Rules of Procedure. Irrespectively of the outcome of the court case, the appointment of the 14 new CEC commissioners who took office on 5 October will remain in force. With two commissioners carried over from the previous commission, the CEC currently has 16 members with one seat vacant. The parliamentary Speaker and the representative of the President in the Rada both made verbal commitments to fill the remaining seat with a candidate proposed by the Opposition Bloc, once a name is put forward.

The CEC Secretariat provides legal, informational and technical support to the CEC’s commissioners. While the Law on the Central Election Commission provides for the establishment of CEC Secretariat regional branches in each oblast, they have never been established.

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DECs are responsible for organizing elections in their districts, including by creating PECs, registering official observers, distributing the ballot papers to the PECs, responding to complaints about violations of the electoral rules and tabulating the results from the PECs in their respective districts. In the parliamentary elections, DECs are comprised of 12-18 members based on the nominations of parties whose factions are registered in the legislature and parties whose candidate lists were registered in the elections. In the presidential election, DECs are comprised of at least 12 members (the maximum number of members is not restricted) based on the nominations of the presidential candidates. Finally, PECs, created prior to the respective elections, are responsible for preparations for Election Day and running polling stations on Election Day. They carry out voting, and then count the ballots in the polling station and send results protocols to the DECs. The number of PEC members depends on the number of voters assigned to the election precinct, ranging from 10 to 18 members.

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In contrast to both presidential and parliamentary elections, the system of electoral administration for local elections is more complicated and, depending on the elections in question, might include a three- or four-tiered electoral administration. At the highest level, the local elections are administered by the CEC, whose powers in terms of preparations for the elections are limited. More directly responsible are the Territorial Election Commissions (TECs), which exist on every sub-national administrative level: oblast; rayon or city (those subordinate directly to oblasts); and village, settlement and city (those subordinate to rayons). PECs again represent the lowest level of electoral administration.

For the national elections, the territory of Ukraine is divided into 225 election districts. These districts are established for electoral management purposes to accelerate transmission of various documents between the polling stations and the CEC, to tabulate the election results and to elect single-member district candidates in the parliamentary elections. In the parliamentary elections, the districts are created with an approximately equal number of voters; under the law, the maximum deviation in the number of voters across the districts, if possible, should not exceed 12 percent of the average number of voters in all 225 districts. This average number of voters is established by dividing the total number of voters registered in the territory of Ukraine by 225. Due to ongoing conflict in the Ukraine’s East and Russia’s occupation of the Crimean Peninsula, in 2014 parliamentary elections no elections were held in 27 single-mandate districts. Therefore, 27 seats in the Parliament remain vacant.