The Counting Continues

As of 1:30PM Kyiv time, the Central Election Commission has counted only about 22% of the vote. One interesting turn in the election for mayor is that the head of one of Kyiv's banks, who is also an active member of a 20,000-member Pentecostal church in Kyiv, is ahead in the race though less than 10% of the votes have been counted.

Why is it taking so long? One reason is because there were simply so many ballots. Each person got 4 huge pieces of paper to vote, all voting is done by marking on the ballot, and everything is counted by hand with about 50 observers looking on. There is such scrutiny in many polling places it just causes the process to last longer. Also, according to the law, if you are inside the building at 10:00PM, you can still vote. So a lot of polling places didn't stop voting till about 11:30. And then there is the fact that many results will be delivered by train since many villages don't have computers or polling people who know how to work them. So far, turn out is just under 70%.

According to the largest exit poll, parliament may look like this:

Party of the Regions	176 ± 4
Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc	136 ± 4
Our Ukraine Bloc	88 ± 3
Socialist Party of Ukraine	31 ± 2
Communist Party of Ukraine	19 ± 1

Tymoshenko, the Socialists, and Our Ukraine were supposed to meet for negotiations at 11 this morning but Our Ukraine (the president's party) didn't come. They want more votes to be counted before the negotiations begin. Yulia can just taste the premiereship. The West's coverage has completely missed the point of this election. They are lauding the unbelievable victory of the Party of the Regions, the pro-Russian party. But to tell the truth, about 180 seats will go for the Party of the Regions, the Communists don't really cooperate with anyone, and the rest of the parliament will be controlled by pro-western, pro-reform, pro-democracy forces. This is a great victory for Ukraine, especially Tymoshenko. The president's party is surely in trouble though.