- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has an 81% approval rating, according to a Gallup poll.
- But he’s declared that Ukraine won’t hold a wartime election.
- An election in the near future would be disastrous for Ukraine’s democracy, experts say.
On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that he wouldn’t support elections while Kyiv is at war.
His statement put to rest questions that arose when foreign allies, such as South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, suggested Ukraine hit the polls amid the war.
But the Ukrainian president’s speech on Monday was loud and clear: no election.
“We must realize that now is the time of defense, the time of battle that determines the fate of the state and people, not the time of manipulations, which only Russia expects from Ukraine,” he said. “I believe that now is not the right time for elections.”
An election in the near future could technically be great for Zelenskyy, who holds a staggering 81% personal approval rating in Ukraine. That’s according to a 2023 Gallup public opinion poll released on October 9.
Still, experts on wartime politics and a Ukrainian election watchdog said Zelenskyy’s decision to delay the election makes sense. War should be the focus, and holding an election now would undermine Ukraine’s democracy instead of upholding it, they said.
“Elections and war are incompatible,” Opora, a Ukrainian civil society that monitors elections, told Insider.
Insider examined three key questions relating to Ukraine’s wartime election season.
Can Zelenskyy delay or call for an election?
No, according to the Ukrainian constitution and electoral code. As the president of Ukraine, Zelenskyy has neither the power to cancel elections nor call them. That authority rests with the Ukrainian parliament.
But the country is currently under martial law, which prohibits the holding of elections and all political activity.
Zelenskyy was clear about this in a May interview with The Washington Post.
“If we have martial law, we cannot have elections,” he said. “The constitution prohibits any elections during martial law. If there is no martial law, then there will be.”
Ukrainian leadership must extend martial law every 90 days, and Zelenskyy just signed bills extending martial law until February 14, 2024.
Zelenskyy, who was elected in March 2019, would have been set to bid for reelection in a presidential race early next year.
“Of course, everyone understands that a range of civil rights are legally limited when martial law is imposed,” Opora said. Under martial law, people can’t hold mass gatherings like political rallies and have to abide by curfews.
“However, such restrictions are necessary in the warring country, and similar legal norms exist in many democratic states,” the civil society added.
Why is Ukraine delaying the election?
For one, most Ukrainians don’t want an election now.
“There have been nine surveys now where the public has in representative samples been asked whether they want elections during the war, and 65 to 80% have clearly answered that they cannot see elections happening during war,” Peter Erben, Ukraine country director for The International Foundation for Electoral Systems, or IFES, said on October 26.
“I think we should listen to the Ukrainian public in this regard,” he added.
Over 100 Ukrainian NGOs have signed a statement saying a wartime election is not feasible. The appeal, led by Opora, warned that “elections during the active phase of the war are extremely dangerous.”
A country under martial law has little room for opposition campaigning or fair political media coverage, Opora told Insider. And with a war ongoing and millions of Ukrainians displaced, a significant number of voters won’t show up to the polls, it added.
“In turn, the president would obviously be able to win the election now given the high level of support, but if there is no secure process on voting day, the low turnout will delegitimize the government as a whole,” the civil group said.
A wartime election in Ukraine would also be rare, if not unprecedented, in modern Europe, Helmut Norpoth, a professor emeritus at Stony Brook University’s department of political science, told Insider.
“Logic would probably dictate, even in a democracy, to postpone an election, which is sort of inherently divisive and partisan when you’re trying to fight external enemies,” said Norpoth, whose work focuses on elections and wartime politics.
Almost all modern democracies have delayed elections when enemy troops are on their soil, he said.
The only major exception in the world, Norpoth said, has been the US, which held elections during significant conflicts like the Civil War, the War of 1812, and World War II.
What would a wartime election look like?
If Ukraine did move forward with a wartime election, it would face a laundry list of serious challenges, the experts said.
Erben and Gio Kobakhidze, Ukraine deputy country director for IFES, wrote in September that in order for a wartime election to happen, “a number of preconditions must be met that are currently absent.”
One major requirement is that Ukraine has to somehow provide voting access to its active troops, of which there are more than 1 million, and nearly 6 million refugees overseas, they wrote.
More than 5 million other people have been internally displaced in Ukraine.
Elections are also expensive, Opora said, in a time when Ukraine needs money for weapons, humanitarian aid, and medical supplies.
Voting infrastructure in Ukraine has also been devastated by the war, with buildings for polling stations such as schools and hospitals destroyed, Opora added.
Then there are the areas near the frontlines, where voters gathering en masse to cast their ballots could easily be targeted by a Russian strike — a problem when Ukrainians overwhelmingly want to vote in person, the civil society said.
“The electronic voting system cannot be used in the conditions when Russia interferes in elections around the world,” Opora said. “Only 8% of citizens trust postal voting.”
And Ukraine would also have to consider how it would provide access to its citizens in occupied areas of Russia, Norpoth said. Moscow holds about 20% of Ukraine’s territory.
“They probably will not send any ballots to areas occupied by Russia, which is a little bit like what happened with the Civil War,” Norpoth said. “Those residents will probably not have a chance.”
Overall, Erben and Kobakhidze wrote, Ukraine’s laws correctly recognize that a free and fair wartime election is implausible.
But they also emphasized that Ukraine should hold an election after the war and improve on voting measures.
Opora concurred. “Now Ukraine has to act the same way as any other Western democracy would do under the conditions of full-scale war — impose martial law and postpone certain processes,” it said.
Zelenskyy had harsh words on Monday for anyone urging Ukraine to hold a wartime election.
“And we all understand that now, in wartime, when there are so many challenges, it is absolutely irresponsible to throw the topic of elections into society in a lighthearted and playful way,” he said.
