The very fact of introducing amendments to the election legislation during the election process on the eve of the repeat voting day deserves a negative assessment. The Venice Commission in its conclusions and a number of other international institutions have repeatedly drawn attention to the undemocratic nature of such a practice.

The Law "On Elections of the President of Ukraine" in the version prior to the amendments adopted on February 3 provided that a meeting of an election commission is authorized if at least two-thirds of the commission's members participate in it. Given that during repeat voting election commissions are formed upon the nomination of two candidates for President of Ukraine, fears are well-founded regarding the use of the quorum requirement for election commissions as a means of disrupting elections by a candidate for whom the voting results are unfavorable, by failing to submit nominations for appointment of members of election commissions, or by more than one-third of commission members refusing to participate in its meeting, or their failure to appear on the voting day. The motivation for adopting the Law was ostensibly the desire to make it impossible to disrupt elections in the manner described above.

The adopted Law provides for the following changes:

- the requirement for a quorum of election commissions at all levels is abolished;

- higher-level commissions are granted the right to decide on the merits of a matter within the competence of a lower-level commission in the event of the latter's inaction;

- adjustments are made to the procedure for forming election commissions, in particular, if a candidate for the post of President of Ukraine has not used the opportunity to submit the established number of nominations to the composition of a certain commission within the defined period, or if the powers of a member of an election commission were terminated early and no nomination was submitted for his or her replacement, the higher-level commission forms the composition of that part of the commission for which nominations were not submitted by the candidate for the post of President of Ukraine, upon the nomination of the city mayor, the head of the district, or district-in-city council.

As noted, the risk of possible disruption of elections at certain polling stations, districts, or as a whole by deliberately failing to ensure a quorum of election commissions does indeed exist. However, abolishing the quorum requirement for election commissions is a rather dubious approach to solving this problem, which in turn gives rise to a number of new problems. Thus, establishing in legislation requirements for the minimum number of members at a meeting of a collegial body, with whose presence the body will be authorized to adopt decisions, is a guarantee of the legitimacy of these decisions. Given that according to the Law, during repeat voting, when counting votes, as well as when establishing voting results, decisions of an election commission are adopted by a majority of the present members of the commission, as well as the procedure established by the Law for convening and holding meetings of election commissions, such changes to the Law may lead to abuses by members of election commissions, the adoption of unlawful decisions by several members of the commission, and even the holding of two or more meetings with the participation of different members of the commission and the adoption of different decisions by them.

Based on the foregoing, the entry into force of such a Law potentially also carries serious threats to the conduct of democratic elections and the establishment of objective voting results. The adopted changes may be deliberately used for the purpose of disorganizing the election process at all levels. The repeat voting on February 7 may become a vivid example of the operation of the well-known saying "it doesn't matter how they vote, it matters who counts," and it may not be just one group of commission members counting and obviously counting differently. If events develop in this vein, it will be difficult to consider at least any of the election commission's decisions legitimate. With such a course of the election process, it will be difficult to establish the objective result of the citizens' expression of will. Let us hope that this scenario will remain hypothetical and will not become reality.

In addition to substantive shortcomings, the Law was adopted in violation of the procedure for consideration of draft laws and non-compliance by people's deputies with the requirements of the Constitution regarding the organization of work of the Verkhovna Rada. Thus, the parliamentarians violated the procedure established by the Rules of Procedure for the preparation and consideration of the draft law in the second reading. In turn, the Rules of Procedure, by which the Verkhovna Rada is guided in its work, were recognized on November 26, 2009 by the Constitutional Court as unconstitutional, since according to Article 92 of the Constitution the organization and procedure of activity of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine is determined exclusively by Law. However, this requirement of the Constitution has been invariably violated by the people's elected representatives since its existence. Article 84 of the Constitution determines that voting at meetings of the Verkhovna Rada is carried out by a people's deputy personally. As could be observed from the broadcast of the Parliament's meeting on February 3, significantly fewer people's deputies were present in the session hall than participated in the voting. That is, it was not the people's deputies who voted, but their voting cards, which has also become a "traditional" violation of the requirements of the Fundamental Law by people's deputies.

Thus, the adoption of the Law on February 3 once again demonstrated the inability of people's deputies to constructively resolve the problems of legislative regulation of the election process in a democratic way, their unwillingness to establish universal, professional rules of election races that do not allow abuses, and their readiness to sacrifice the legal quality of laws, the legitimacy of procedures, and to change the rules for conducting elections during their conduct solely to satisfy a certain current interest.

In any case, we call on political forces to conscientiously abide by the law during the elections of the President of Ukraine and to accept any expression of will of the citizens of Ukraine.