Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Jane Cooper: Observing Ukraine's Elections
23 Plays12 days ago
Win the votes, buy the votes, steal the votes, invalidate the votes! There is a lot that can go right - and so much that can go wrong - in a Ukrainian election. From the opening of the campaign through to the final decision on the results, it is a rollercoaster ride for the candidates, the election workers, and the international observers who have travelled from afar to see it all.
In What Ukrainian Elections Taught Me about Democracy long-time election observer Jane Cooper recounts her experience monitoring a municipal election in the mid-sized city of Kirovohrad in 2015
Jane Cooper is a professional researcher and writer whose interests span from local history to international politics. For more than twenty-five years, she has been bringing to life stories from the past and present, drawing on extensive research and hands-on experience in Canada and abroad.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Observations Podcast
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Observations podcast. My name is Matt Davis and in today's episode we'll be talking about election observations in other parts of the world. I'm delighted to be joined by Jane Cooper, who has observed in elections in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan and multiple times in the Ukraine in 2010, 2012, 2014 2015.
00:00:33
Speaker
Welcome to the show, Jane. Thank you, Matt. It's ah great to be here. Thanks for the invitation.
Jane's Political Interest Origins
00:00:38
Speaker
now To start yourself, how did you get into electoral observation? Okay, well, I was always um interested in politics and elections. In high school, I actually took a course that included ah electoral systems and how they work, the difference between first past the post and proportional representation and ranked ballots, things like that. So that got me
Early Election Observations
00:01:02
Speaker
interested. i studied political science at university.
00:01:05
Speaker
um Of course, I'm voting all the time in elections in Canada. um And informally, when I started traveling early in my career, I observed electoral processes. So i i saw the registration process for the independence referendum in Namibia.
00:01:21
Speaker
um I saw a couple of quite contested elections in Sri Lanka when I was working there. um And I saw one election in Ukraine um early on. And I went to the U.S. during presidential elections to see how the vote happened there. So I was very interested in electoral politics.
00:01:37
Speaker
But then um I was very fortunate to be selected by the organization in Canada that works with the Canadian government to second observers to missions with the OSCE, so the Organization for Society and Cooperation in Europe.
00:01:55
Speaker
um And that was really exciting. That was
First Formal Observation Experience
00:01:58
Speaker
super interesting. The first election I observed was in Tajikistan, a country I'd worked in before, but I had not observed politics really closely in. um So very interesting opportunity.
00:02:07
Speaker
Okay. So yeah you mentioned that observation can be a great way to explore topics of interest to you in a different country. What topics of interest have you explored through electoral observations?
00:02:20
Speaker
Well, um I would say ah there are many different things. You know, what I always like about election observ observation is that really you have the mandate to ask almost anybody, almost anything, because it's all part of the context of the election.
00:02:34
Speaker
um But I have always found it very interesting to to look at local history, to understand the history of the country you're visiting. So, for instance, when I was in Ukraine, um You know, you can't really understand modern politics in Ukraine if you don't um know a bit about the history of
Political Differences in Ukraine
00:02:50
Speaker
Ukraine. And for instance, the the difference between the history of West Ukraine and Eastern Ukraine, where in Western Ukraine, of course, was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the beginning of the last century and then became part of Poland for for the period between the two World Wars.
00:03:05
Speaker
um and then only joined the Soviet Union after the Second World War, whereas the eastern part of Ukraine has been you know was part of the Russian Empire for centuries. So big differences in how um ah you know in that history, and it it reverberates down to politics today and the differences in Western Ukrainian politics and Eastern Ukrainian politics.
00:03:26
Speaker
So it's really, i think, useful and interesting to learn about those those things, reading some history books. It's also very important in Ukraine, of course, to understand the number of people who have died, who died in the previous century in wars and in famines, right? Phenomenal death toll over the previous century, and that ah likewise ah verb re reverberates into modern politics.
00:03:49
Speaker
But it's also um a great opportunity to look at recent
Elections in Post-Soviet Central Asia
00:03:53
Speaker
changes. So I observed in the pre-Central Asian republics, which were all, you know, what they call economies in transition,
00:04:00
Speaker
um from a you know a Soviet model to a capitalist model, um and theoretically from a communist system of government to democracy.
00:04:11
Speaker
um And so it was quite interesting to see the differences between those three countries, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, in how they how they took on different forms of democracy or didn't.
00:04:24
Speaker
and the the growth in, you know, slide into autocratic government, particularly in Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, and, you know, shrinking democracy. So very interesting. Also to see the similarities, because all of the former Soviet republics still use an electoral administration system that really is a hangover from the Soviet system, where they have very large polls and poll staff. So they'll have several thousand voters in one poll, and then the poll staff is maybe 10 or 12 people working together on a committee um that then have to...
00:05:00
Speaker
vote on election administration issues and vote on any complaints that come up. um So that's quite different from how we run elections in Canada um and how they do it in the United States and I think in a lot of other countries.
00:05:14
Speaker
So you need to understand the history. You also need to look at recent changes in the economy and politics to understand what's going on. And an election observation gives you the opportunity to learn all those things. Okay. It's interesting what you mentioned there, that the structures that run these elections in some of these post-Soviet republics are the same structures.
Systemic Continuity in Election Staff
00:05:36
Speaker
Yeah. when you you know When you meet people working on elections on the poll staff and you ask them, well, how long have you been doing this? I was meeting people who were like, well, I've been doing this for 20 years. you know i've I've worked on all the elections and they worked on elections back in the Soviet period when Of course, there wasn't the competition that we would expect now, but there was still that process.
00:05:55
Speaker
ah you know People did vote, they went to polls, they cast ballots, um but the candidates that they had available to them were not necessarily representing a very wide range of political options. Okay.
00:06:07
Speaker
Now we're to stop for a short break.
00:06:16
Speaker
Some elections don't just choose governments, they change nations. On observations in the first series on historic general elections, we take you inside the ballot boxes of history.
00:06:31
Speaker
The moments when Britain's political landscape was turned upside down. The great reform election of 1832, when the old order cracked and democracy began to widen. 1906, the liberal landslide that founded the welfare state. 1918, the coupon election, the first election after the great war, after suffrage,
00:06:55
Speaker
seeing millions vote for the very first time including women over 30. 1924, the first labor government and its dramatic fall. 1929, the flapper election which saw women vote on an equal footing to men.
00:07:13
Speaker
1997, Tony Blair and the new labor sweeping away 18 years of conservative rule. And 2010, the dawn of coalition politics in the modern age.
00:07:24
Speaker
These were not just elections. They were turning points. They changed Great Britain. Join us on Observations in the coming weeks, the podcast that explores the votes, the voice, and the verdicts that define the nation.
00:07:39
Speaker
History at the ballot box. So you observed in Ukraine across multiple years.
Impact of Social Media on Elections
00:07:50
Speaker
How has the Internet changed campaigns in Ukraine? Well, the Internet's changed campaigning everywhere, of course, in all countries. um But I was able to observe that kind of firsthand in Ukraine.
00:08:02
Speaker
When I was first there in 2010, the Internet did not play a huge role. 2010 is pre-smartphone era. Seems like ah not that long ago, but um people didn't have ah smartphones in 2010. And of course, by the end of the ah the period that I was observing, so 2015, smartphone was a big thing.
00:08:22
Speaker
So access to social media became very widespread. So of course, all kinds of information and disinformation rapidly being spread around. Also a new mode of advertising. So where um when we first observed the main mode of advertising was billboards, newspaper information, posters, things like that. By 2015, of course, you had ads for your candidates popping up in your Facebook feed all the time.
00:08:47
Speaker
So that did make a difference. So those things have changed.
00:08:54
Speaker
ah You mentioned there was an internet meme that impacted one of the elections. i was wondering if you could tell me a bit more about that. Yeah, so in 2012, there was a fairly sort of humorous story, but interesting and telling story and and where I was observing. So there was a young man who was a candidate um or had been a candidate at the municipal level, and he got very annoyed with local government and the ruling party. And so we put up a billboard and don't know you can see this little image here, he put up a billboard of this ah grandmother with her cat and the text on the, um the this is a refrigerator magnet, but it was a billboard at the time.
00:09:33
Speaker
The text said, when I found out my grandson was voting for the party of regions, I decided to leave the house to the cat. So was just a you know a negative, humorous kind of comment about and the the ruling party.
00:09:47
Speaker
And the billboard itself, of course, only lasted about three days and local government had it taken it down because it was they were offended. um And in ah a pre-internet days, that would have been a very small scale protest that didn't go very far. But because um it was you know the growth of social media, um the the billboard was photographed and it was distributed on social media and it went far and wide. and people even in neighboring countries were laughing at this joke.
00:10:12
Speaker
And it it reached the point of the national stage where I saw a sketch on the Quartile 95 sketch comedy show, which of course is the was the troupe run by Vladimir Zelensky, where you know they use this this meme and this little story to do a humorous sketch about you know local people protesting against the government.
00:10:34
Speaker
um So it was a really, it was a good example because at that point in time I think the local government officials thought they could just take down a billboard and the story would disappear and contraire because of social media it became a national story.
00:10:49
Speaker
um And so that is, you know, we were just at that changing point in time when there were people who didn't quite understand yet the role of social media would play. Now ah and nobody is surprised when information and disinformation are spread very rapidly on the internet, there's no question.
00:11:06
Speaker
And so, you know, what that means for election observation is that election observers um now actually have to observe social media.
Monitoring Social Media Influence
00:11:14
Speaker
When I first was an observer, the focus of your media observations tended to be on the print media, newspapers, magazines, and on local television.
00:11:23
Speaker
And in Ukraine and like countries all over the world, ah print media is rapidly shrinking. um Not a lot of people reading the newspapers, not a lot of newspapers to read. um Television is still there, but less and less important, particularly state television.
00:11:38
Speaker
So we would observe, even 2015, I observed state television, and I could see that state television was promoting one candidate over the others, giving that candidate much more time on air.
00:11:50
Speaker
However, you know the bottom line was nobody was watching state TV, right? you know That's not where people were getting their information. they were They were looking at Facebook, they were looking at all kinds of internet websites, news sites, local local news.
00:12:03
Speaker
So now, ah election observers internationally and anywhere else um have to monitor social media if they want to understand the information available to the voters.
00:12:15
Speaker
And when you're an observer, that is one of the main things that you want to understand is whether or not the voters have enough accurate information available to them to make a rational choice about who to vote for.
00:12:26
Speaker
So you have to look at social media and the OSCE has now produced a a very detailed and useful booklet with a methodology for observers to follow social media in a kind of scientific way.
00:12:40
Speaker
um so that they can comment on on what' what they've seen on social media and how that um impacts the ability of voters to make a good decision. Well, it's good to hear that there are some guidelines out there now.
00:12:55
Speaker
So I was wondering, what surprised you most about observing in Ukraine? Well, okay, there were, there were you know, if there were always many things that may surprise us, you find when you visit a new country, that's why it's great to go to new countries and see new things.
00:13:09
Speaker
I would say that one of the things that surprised me in Ukraine was ah the way that, you know, most people that you met really did want the system to work honestly. They really wanted that, you know, an honest democracy that was fair.
00:13:21
Speaker
However, they were pretty resigned to the shortcomings of the system they had, and they were and they were very cynical. say as a whole, a fairly cynical society Ukraine is.
00:13:31
Speaker
um So on that, I think that cynicism fed into acceptance of i mean of things that were not always fair and honest. and However, one of the other things that really surprised me in the long run was, you know, was the rise of Zelensky because when I was observing in 2015, he was a comedian.
Volodymyr Zelensky's Political Rise
00:13:50
Speaker
He was very successful. He had national stature. But he was very much a comedian, a political satirist. A lot of his comedy was focused on politics.
00:13:57
Speaker
He clearly had his finger on the pulse of of politics so that he could satirize it. um But I had not, you know, at that stage, had not envisaged him becoming a politician. And in fact, of course, when he ran for election, he got the largest majority that any electoral candidate had got as president.
00:14:14
Speaker
And then when his party ran for parliamentary elections, they got a majority in the RADA, which no other party had ever got before. So um that was really interesting to see that the the people of Ukraine saw him as a different kind of candidate. They were you know they were the change. they were looking He was the change they were looking for.
00:14:32
Speaker
um And of course, we had no idea he was going to become the kind of international statesman that he has become. So those things are are hard to see in the future.
00:14:42
Speaker
Who's going to be the The big leader.
00:14:47
Speaker
And is there anything else like to mention about your time as an election observer?
Importance of Nonpartisan Observers
00:14:52
Speaker
Well, OK, I would say that, you know, the big lessons for me being an international observer was really coming to understand the importance of the role of nonpartisan political observers in every country.
00:15:03
Speaker
and particularly in my country, I'm from Canada. And in Canada, we actually, um our election act does not allow for non-partisan observers in the polls. We only have party observers. So what we call scrutineers.
00:15:17
Speaker
um So I feel that's a shortcoming of the Canadian legislation and the OSCE has actually commented to the Canadian government multiple times that we need to change our act to allow for non-partisan observers in the polls, like democracy volunteers, right? Like you have in the UK.
00:15:32
Speaker
um we I think that we need more people to be directly involved in elections as a safeguard for democracy. And people have, you know, they have three options and young people in particular, right? Three options. You can go and work for ah the election administration on an election day. And in most countries, the government is scrambling to find enough people to fill all the posts at the polls.
00:15:55
Speaker
So it's always a great opportunity for young people to learn more about democracy. by going and working for their elections officials. They can also sign up to be a party observer. Parties are always looking for people to observe on their behalf in the polls.
00:16:09
Speaker
um But for people who haven't um aligned with any political political party, um it is really great if there is an opportunity for people to be sign up with an organization that provides a neutral, nonpartisan observation team.
00:16:23
Speaker
And I think all of those things are really important. i mean, for an example, um in Canada during our recent election, we had an election just a few months ago, and there was on social media, there were rumors circulating. There were people questioning, why do we use pencils to fill in our ballots?
00:16:41
Speaker
um which is something we've always done in Canada, right? Since since there weren't any pens around and pencils were the thing, we've used pencils to fill in our ballots. It's a very simple and efficient and cheap way to for the elections officials to provide ah writing tool.
00:16:55
Speaker
um But people were questioning, well, if you fill in your ballot in pencils, somebody could erase your X, they could change your vote. And I felt, you know, when I heard that, that only people who had never really been spent any time inside a poll would worry about that.
00:17:10
Speaker
Because if you spent any time inside the poll, you would know that the ballots are never unsupervised. And there's no, like, opportunity for somebody to erase your vote on a ballot. The ballots are always, like, either inside a sealed ballot box or, immediately when they're taken out of the ballot box, they are counted in front of other observers.
00:17:31
Speaker
So um this you know that little ah rumor really demonstrated to me that we need more people spending more time inside our polls so that they can understand how the system really works.
00:17:43
Speaker
um And that, I think, can build trust in democracy. And trust in democracy is a very valuable thing, especially in this era when um a lot of political players are trying to ah introduce mistrust in the system, we need to build that trust and observation is a really great way to build trust in the system.
00:18:03
Speaker
And is there any way for people to learn more about your experiences? Well, okay. I am, you know, I wrote this book about my experiences in Ukraine. It's, it's travel writing and political writing mixed together from the McGill Queens University Press.
00:18:19
Speaker
So if you're interested in learning more about what it's like to be an election observer, you could always read my book. ah Okay. Thank you very much for joining me. It's been a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you, Matt. Great to talk to you.
00:18:31
Speaker
Thank you for listening to today's episode of the Observations podcast. If you found yourself interested in elections in Ukraine, do check out our episode on the 2004 election in Ukraine and the Orange Revolution.
00:18:44
Speaker
And... If you're interested in what observers do closer to home, check out our episodes where we talk with democracy volunteers about their observations in Norway, Finland, and the English local elections.
00:18:56
Speaker
Do follow us wherever you are listening. A little reminder that we are also available on YouTube at Observations Podcast, where you'll be able to actually see the billboard-turned-fridge magnet mentioned earlier on.
00:19:09
Speaker
If you're already listening there, please do like, comment, and subscribe. It helps us greatly. My name is Matt Davis. Thank you for listening to the Observations Podcast.
00:19:28
Speaker
The Observations podcast is being brought to you by Democracy Volunteers, the UK's leading election observation group. Democracy Volunteers is non-partisan and does not necessarily share the opinions of participants in the podcast.
00:19:41
Speaker
It brings the podcast to you to improve knowledge of elections, both national and international.