DEMOCRACY IN UKRAINE

Ukrainian women rule!

The train back to Kyiv left at 11:45 p.m. last night. Throughout our observation effort in Dnipropetrovsk we were on an aggressive schedule, but we saw all key aspects of the regional balloting, met with many officials and pro-democracy activists, and effectively got the word out that IRI is quite serious, thorough and professional in its mission.

The meat of the post-voting phase

Without question, our team put lots of points on the board toward assisting Ukraine in achieving its national goal of improving fairness, transparency and accuracy in the conduct of its election. This strictly from the standpoint of being present and carefully applying IRI's monitoring protocols.

For me, it was quite gratifying to receive so much immediate feedback from individual poll workers upon our finishing each polling site. The presence of American observers was deeply appreciated.

In 99% of cases, our new Ukrainian friends told us our organizational interest, our extra set of eyes, open notebooks, scribbling pens, flashing camera and most of all our discerning questions were a welcome part of Ukraine's election process. Most were proud and happy to be a part of such a massive effort in the democracy movement in their country.

Not even the election-night antics of the station #61 chairman were enough to overcome the powerful sense of purpose demonstrated by the entire commission there. His hours-long sack-gluing episode aside, our report on the real essence of the post-balloting phase — the integrity of the actual counting of ballots — will be based on our final election-related observations.

These observations will be reported to our central IRI team later today in Kyiv. From there, IRI's professional staff will evaluate our conclusions within the context of others received from team members returning to Kyiv. All findings will be folded into IRI's overall assessment of the Ukrainian election.

Follow the ballots

We slept for a few hours, met in the hotel lobby, grabbed a quick breakfast then headed to the regional election commission headquarters. Chairman Olesya Marchenka was holding court in a large auditorium.

She read protocols aloud from neighborhood polling stations in her jurisdiction. She barked results tabulated by polling commissions and demanded missing datapoints be immediately supplied by commission chairmen.

Now this lady runs a meeting. No question about who's in charge here. She moves from one action item to the next raising her voice if someone's not ready to report.

Polling results are read and entered into a computer base. Marchenka's final tabulation will be sent electronically to Ukraine's central election commission.

The women of #61 take charge

We see lots of chairmen sitting in the regional election commission auditorium with their sacks of polling materials. Some sacks are bound with string, most are taped. I saw one that appeared glued.

For some reason we felt compelled to check on this. You've got to admire the women of polling station #61. Their early-morning mutiny allowed the commission to get on with the ballot counting.

Their results will soon be reported here.

We watched Marchenka rattle off protocol statistics for a couple hours. We perked up when protocols from the stations we observed last night were announced. They got their ballots in!

We're happy for the commissioners. We recognize people from the polling stations when they present their returns to the regional commission. It feels almost like we're seeing old friends in a large crowd.

We scribble down statistics in our notebooks to compare with data collected yesterday through our interviews.

How many ballots did they receive? How many mobile ballot voters? How many eligible voters?

These findings go into our report.

Eighteen hours and still counting

We drop Mike off at an Internet cafe. Slava, Iryna and I see some movement at a youth center that yesterday served as polling station #1. We decide to check it out.

Can they still be counting ballots in there? Voting stopped 18 hours ago.

We enter the lobby and look into the side room. The commissioners are there still counting votes.

We can't go in beyond the lobby due to election rules, but we watch for a little while through the door. These poor poll workers have been working on this election for at least 33 hours straight. Incredible — and inspiring.

One thing I notice about the commissioners tending the final details at station #1 — they're all women.

We meet up with Mike, load our luggage and head out for some dinner — pizza. Even though we're exhausted, the conversation is lively.

We recount the highlights of our mission. Three overwhelming thoughts cross my mind:

First, I have been on other election observation missions with multiple democracy groups. This is my second with IRI. They're the absolute best.

IRI's training, networks, advance research and years of experience dramatically amplify the capacity of a four-man sub-team like ours to plug into an entire city and come back with volumes of useful, objective election data.

Second, sustained international observation of elections is vital to a maturing democracy like Ukraine's. When Ukrainians see it is important for foreigners to show up, watch, listen and learn it reinforces the importance of the moment.

We heard this many times, especially at #61.

Third, Ukrainian women are the undisputed leaders of their country's democracy. Ukrainian women rule!

Former U.S. Congressman Bob Schaffer, a member of the Colorado State Board of Education, is an election observer for the Parliamentary elections in Ukraine. The election is coming up this Sunday, March 26.