Declaration by a Precinct Election Commission of the Invalidity of Voting at the Election Precinct

1. A precinct election commission shall be entitled to declare the voting in an election precinct invalid if it establishes that there have been violations of the requirements of this Code that make it impossible to determine the true results of expression of the voters’ will, only under the following circumstances:

1) discovery of cases of illegal voting (filling in, dropping the ballot into the ballot box for a voter by another person, except for the cases provided for in parts five, ten of Article 248 of this Code; voting by persons who do not have the right to vote in the respective elections; voting by persons not included to the list of voters at the election precinct or included in it unreasonably; voting by a person more than once) in the amount exceeding 5 percent of the number of voters who received ballots at the election precinct for the respective local elections;

2) destruction of or damage to a ballot box (ballot boxes) that makes it impossible to establish the content of the ballot papers, if the number of such ballot papers exceeds by five percent the number of voters who received ballot papers at the election precinct for the respective local elections;

3) discovery in the ballot boxes of ballot papers in a number that exceeds by more than ten percent the number of voters who received ballot papers at the election precinct for the respective local elections.

2. If the circumstances provided for by Part One of this Article are discovered, the precinct election commission shall, in each case, write a report thereon, which shall be signed by all present members of the precinct election commission and certified by the seal of the election commission. Such a report shall be the basis for consideration by the precinct election commission of the issue of recognizing the voting at the polling station from the relevant local elections in the respective district as invalid.

3. Should a decision be made on declaring the voting in certain local elections at the election precinct invalid, all ballot papers found in the ballot boxes at the election precinct shall not be subject to counting. In this case, the protocol of the precinct election commission on the counting of votes at the precinct submitted for territorial electoral lists of candidates for the Verkhovna Rada of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, oblast, rayon, rayon in the city, and city, village, settlement council (a territorial community with 10,000 voters and more) must contain only the information specified in paragraphs two to nine of part two of Article 251 of this Code, and the protocol of the precinct election commission on the counting of votes at the polling station submitted for candidates in the multi-member district, or for the position of the village, settlement, city mayor - in paragraphs seventeen - twenty-four of the second part of Article 251 of this Code. In other places, a dash shall be inserted. The protocol of the precinct election commission on vote counting shall be completed by the precinct election commission in accordance with the procedure prescribed by Article 251 of this Code.

4. If a precinct election commission adopts a decision declaring voting in certain local elections at the election precinct to be invalid, the ballot papers shall be packed. The inscription “The ballot papers” shall be made on the package, with indication and/or the number of the election district, the number of the election precinct, the number of the packed ballot papers, the date and time of packaging; the package shall be signed by the precinct election commission members and affixed with the election commission’s seal.

5. A decision of a precinct election commission declaring voting at the election precinct to be invalid, and the report (reports) on the basis of which such decision was adopted, shall be attached to the first copy of the protocol of the precinct election commission on vote counting at the election precinct for the respective local elections.