The electoral law promulgated on the eighteenth of November 1993 in the Ukraine, maintained some essential elements of the old electoral law of the Soviet period. Among others:
- those that regulated the standing and registration of candidates;
- should the percentage of voters have been below fifty per cent of the voters' register, it is obligatory to repeat the elections, in addition, necessarily with new candidates;
- the winning candidate is required to obtain twenty-five per cent plus one of the votes cast, as should this not be fulfilled, a second round has to take place in two weeks' time;
- the possibility of a 'negative' vote, by scratching a candidate from the list.
In the elections held on 27 March 1994, the application of these rules, relics of a non-democratic system, compelled them to hold four electoral rounds, but even so, it was not possible to cover part of the 450 seats in Parliament.
The rules regarding fifty per cent of the register and twenty-five per cent of the votes for the candidate had been maintained by exception in the Ukraine, in spite of the opposite example of the majority of the electoral laws in the countries that emerged form the former USSR, being new. It is within the peculiarities of the Soviet electoral system that the logic behind this should be sought: contrary to the liberal democratic systems, the elections were not free and fair among competitors, but an almost plebiscite-like ratification of the decisions adopted in another seat and moulded into the proposal of one sole candidacy, officially supported by the organs of the state party. Only in these conditions, where there is no real competition among parties or candidacies and the vote is compulsory, can rules that do not take into account abstentions or the possible dispersion of the vote and establish such high voting thresholds, be explained. The same applies to the obligation to repeat the elections should it be the other way round: it is evident that the Soviet system did not suffer the discrediting consequences that the need for elections to be repeated in a democratic system, would have (although now not three times, but only once).
The subsequent report by the IFES advised all sorts of measures already incorporated into the majority of the electoral systems of the ex-USSR countries that have become independent: to eliminate the rules of fifty and twenty-five per cent; to modify the regulations on the proposal of candidacies (that distinguished among candidates depending on the group that proposed them); to abolish the possibility of casting negative votes; to introduce a more effective system to resolve disputes, entrusted to the electoral management bodies and ordinary jurisdiction and establish a reinforced Central Electoral Management Body, which is more centralised and has greater financial autonomy.
