OPEN LETTER: No European politicians to whitewash Kremlin’s fraudulent elections or pseudo-referenda
To: Members of National and Regional Parliaments of the EU Member States, Members of the European Parliament In light of the Kremlin’s statements on preparations for conducting so-called “referenda” on territories occupied during the military aggression against Ukraine, the European Platform for Democratic Elections (EPDE) calls on all national and regional Parliaments of the […]
Pseudo-referendums in the invaded territories of Ukraine: what Russia plans to do and how to disable them
Russia is preparing to hold pseudo-referendums on Ukrainian territories. The results of these false referendums will create “legal grounds” for Russia to annex Ukrainian territories and demand that the world recognize the annexation or, at last, accept it, also possibly by resorting to nuclear blackmail. The results of the “vote” will be null and void […]
Open Election Data & Disinformation Academy
The Civil Network OPORA, with support from the National Democratic Institute, is pleased to announce a call for participation in a four-day training program within the ‘Open Election Data & Disinformation’ Academy! The Academy will take place in Warsaw from August 1-4. Deadline: July 6, 2022 The program is tailored for citizen election observation leaders […]
French election candidates whitewashed fraudulent elections
In recent years, EPDE witnessed the increasing phenomenon of politically biased, or fake, observation, a form of politically-motivated election observation whose chief objective is to mislead the public regarding the regularity of political processes or the legitimacy of an election result. Based on the evidence collected by EPDE throughout the years, the practice of […]
Not free or fair? Rethinking election observation in the EU – Unhack Democracy Conference ’22
(The full conference livestream is available here) Summary of conclusions and recommendations Over the course of two days representatives of pro-democracy groups from over 20 countries across central and eastern Europe, the Black Sea region, Balkans, Belarus and Russia joined activists, journalists, academics, politicians, diplomats and policy makers to discuss the most pressing problems […]
New EPDE publication ‘Puzzling rules – equal game?’
This study compares political finance regulations across the EU and identifies common challenges and possible responses to those. The recommendations of this study seek to enhance EU-level regulation of political finance with the aim to replicate this at the national level. This is part of the multi-country project “ The full publication can be downloaded […]
Referendum 2022: Final report
Final analytical report of the expert mission to assess the national referendum of 2022 on the issue of amendments and additions to the Constitution of the Republic of Belarus Summary Preparations for the referendum took place against the backdrop of a profound socio-political crisis triggered by the presidential election of August 2020 […]
Human Rights Situation in April 2022
Summary The war in Ukraine and its consequences have dramatically changed the current agenda in Europe and the rest of the world. The Human Rights Center Viasna (Viasna – hereinafter) strongly condemns the actions of Belarusian and Russian authorities that undermine the principles of peaceful coexistence of peoples, violate the Constitution and laws of […]
Online Workshop: Adapting polling stations to the needs of people with disabilities – law and practice (in Polish)
The Political Accountability Foundation invites you to participate in a training on adapting polling stations to the needs of people with disabilities. The training will be conducted by Dr. Jarosław Zbieranek and Sylwia Drozdowska. The regulations specifying the requirements that a designated accessible location must meet will be discussed. We also anticipate a “soft” part […]
Pseudo-referenda or incorporation into occupied Crimea
The Russian invaders have not been consistent so far in their approach to governing the temporarily occupied territories in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhia, Kharkiv, and Mykolaiv Oblasts. In some places, L/DPR militants ‘appoint’ unknown persons to nonexistent offices, in others, there are talks of holding a pseudo-referendum, and PR campaigns are run elsewhere to […]