22 July 2026
(IMAGE: AI)
The war has changed the geography of Ukrainian voters, but these changes have not yet been fully reflected in the State Voter Registry. Both nationwide and in the Odesa region, the electoral system will face a number of challenges when post-war elections are announced. In particular, it is already necessary to update personal information—voters can do this on their own.
Over the years of full-scale war, millions of Ukrainians have changed their place of residence. Some have found temporary shelter in other regions, others have left the country, some have already returned home, and others still do not know when that will be possible. However, in the State Voter Registry, many citizens remain registered at their old addresses.
The reason for this situation is clear: a voter’s polling place is determined based on their officially registered place of residence or their updated voting address. If a person has not updated their information after moving, the data in the Registry no longer reflects their actual place of residence. This is precisely why the full-scale war has exposed one of the electoral system’s key vulnerabilities: amid unprecedented population displacement, the accuracy of the State Voter Registry increasingly depends not only on the work of government agencies but also on the responsibility of citizens themselves.
People are in no hurry to update their information, because for most of those who were forced to leave their homes, the last few years have been spent searching for housing, work, schools for their children, and at least a modicum of stability.
“I don’t know if I’ll update my information, because no one knows when the elections will be. When they are—that’s when I’ll update it. Maybe,” explains an OPORA interviewee, an internally displaced person who participated in a study as part of the “Every Voter Matters” project.
Such sentiments are all too familiar to those who work with internally displaced persons. People not only put off updating their information in the State Voter Registry, but also often fail to change their officially registered place of residence or even apply for IDP status. Many still lack confidence in the future; some do not want to lose their social benefits; and others—especially those subject to military conscription who are avoiding mobilization—are effectively hiding from government authorities.
“The situation is very fluid; people have moved several times and realize that there may be many more moves ahead of them. IDPs who lack a stable foundation—such as their own home, a job, or a more or less stable income—are preoccupied with entirely different problems and think about the elections the least. If a person does not need to formally register their place of residence to resolve practical issues, there is a 99% chance they will not do so,” one of the IDP councils in the Odesa region explained to OPORA.
As a result, the problem of outdated data in the Registry affects millions of Ukrainians. According to official data, there are approximately 4.6 million internally displaced persons registered in Ukraine. At the same time, as noted by the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets, these statistics have long failed to reflect the actual situation, since the system does not allow for comprehensive tracking of people’s subsequent movements: who has returned home, who has left the country, and who have ended up in the temporarily occupied territories.
Another large group whose data in the IDR is out of date consists of Ukrainians residing outside the country. According to a study by OPORA, approximately 5.2 million people may have left the country between 2022 and 2025. According to European Union data, as of the end of May 2026, 4.38 million Ukrainian citizens were under temporary protection in EU countries.
All of this means that the geographic distribution of Ukrainian voters has long since changed, yet this is not currently reflected in the State Voter Registry.
The Odesa region is no exception to the overall picture: according to official data, more than 223,000 internally displaced persons are registered in the region, of whom more than 170,000 are people aged 18 and older—that is, potential voters. IDPs live in nearly three-quarters of the region’s settlements, but the burden on the electoral infrastructure is unevenly distributed.
The most telling example is the communities around Odesa. Specifically, in the Tairovka settlement community, there are 5,706 adult internally displaced persons registered, while the total number of voters is 18,863. According to OPORA’s estimates, if all these people vote at their current place of residence, the existing polling stations will be short at least 4,932 seats. A similar situation is observed in the Avangardivska community, where 3,359 adult IDPs are registered. Given the current number of voters—15,895—the shortfall would amount to nearly 1,000 seats.
However, representatives of the Odesa Region IDP Council do not consider the creation of new polling stations to be a universal solution. According to them, IDPs do not live in compact groups in specific districts or settlements, so the main task is not to expand the network of polling stations but to update the data in the State Voter Registry.
“To update their information, it’s not enough for a person to simply press a few buttons on their phone; therefore, there must be strong motivation to take this step. That is precisely why a large-scale government information campaign is needed to explain to people why this is necessary, how to do it, and why they should not put off taking these steps until the start of the election process,” says Olena Polishchuk, chair of the Odesa Regional Council for IDPs.
She also points out that internally displaced persons do not lose their right to vote, but they will only be able to exercise it if their information in the State Voter Registry is up to date—yet this is precisely what citizens often overlook.
A similar challenge will face Ukrainians living abroad. According to the Center for Economic Strategy, 6.6% of Ukrainian refugees in European Union countries came from the Odesa region. The procedure for their voting after martial law ends has not yet been finalized. However, one thing is already clear: regardless of the model chosen, its effective implementation will be impossible without up-to-date voter data.
“In my opinion, this issue could be resolved quite simply with EU member states: we could synchronize our data with theirs, making the process as automated as possible so that our State Register can ‘see’ data on our citizens, at least in Europe. Because, of course, we all urge—and will continue to urge—Ukrainians to update their information, especially before elections, but we must also understand that only the most motivated people will actually do so. “That is why I am in favor of automating these processes, and we should start doing this right now,” notes the head of the regional branch of one of the political parties in the Odesa region.
It should be noted that the transfer to Ukraine of personal data on its citizens residing in the EU is limited by the requirements of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, so automatic synchronization of European registries with Ukrainian ones—including the State Voter Registry—is not possible.
A study by OPORA shows that the problem with citizens’ reluctance to update their data stems from a lack of information on how to do so and the absence of an official call to take such action. While 58% of respondents expressed a willingness to update their data in the State Voter Registry on their own, this figure rises to 77% after receiving a personal notification or reminder from the government.
During election campaigns in previous years, Ukrainian citizens who were not at their registered voting address could use the procedure for a temporary change of voting location. This procedure was valid only for the duration of a specific election campaign and did not change the voter’s registered address. Statistics on such requests make it possible to assess the extent to which voters needed to vote outside their place of registration. In the most recent parliamentary elections, held in 2019, 14,458 voters in the Odesa region temporarily changed their polling place (most of them voted within the region; Donetsk Oblast was second in terms of “popularity,” and the city of Kyiv was third). In the 2019 presidential election (first round), 14,132 voters changed their polling place; in the second round, 16,375 did so. In the 2014 special presidential election in Ukraine, 9,718 voters changed their polling place, and in the special Verkhovna Rada election that same year, 9,829 did so. In the 2012 parliamentary elections, 8,488 people changed their polling place (Kyiv was the top city in all these elections in terms of the number of people who changed their polling place). Thus, with each election cycle, people increasingly took advantage of the opportunity to vote outside their place of registration. After the start of full-scale war, population mobility increased significantly; millions of Ukrainians changed their place of residence, so the clarity and transparency of the procedure for changing one’s voting address—which allows voters to register at their actual place of residence not just for a single election campaign but on a permanent basis—are becoming significantly more important.
“Elections have not been held for seven years. During this time, a whole generation of young people has emerged who have never voted, and millions of Ukrainians were forced to suddenly change their place of residence. For most of them, changing their voting address is a new experience, not a deliberate reluctance to update their information. That is precisely why a large-scale information campaign must become one of the key elements of preparation for the postwar elections,” says Anatoliy Boiko, OPORA’s regional consultant in the Odesa region and chair of the Odesa Committee of Voters of Ukraine.
On January 1 of this year, the Central Election Commission resumed operations of the automated information and communication system “State Voter Registry” in terms of its interaction with voters. Due to the full-scale war that began in February 2022, its operation was temporarily suspended to protect personal data; however, the authorities responsible for maintaining the State Voter Registry are now accepting applications and requests from voters and compiling and providing information from the Registry. The “Voter’s Personal Account” service has also resumed operations.
There are 19 State Voter Registry administration departments operating in the Odesa region. They are staffed at nearly 89% capacity (this is one of the highest rates in Ukraine; the situation is better only in the Sumy, Chernihiv, and Zaporizhzhia regions). At the same time, the regional administration department is only half-staffed.
The scale of the work carried out by the State Voter Registry offices is illustrated by the statistics: according to data provided by OPORA, during the last quarter of 2025, employees of the State Voter Registry offices in the Odesa region made over 48,000 changes to the registry. Nearly 30,000 of these changes involved updates to voting addresses, while several thousand more involved corrections to personal data or the acquisition or loss of voting rights.
The region’s demographic landscape is also changing. At the end of 2010, there were over 1.84 million registered voters in the Odesa region; before the start of the full-scale invasion, the number stood at 1.77 million; and by the end of 2025, it had dropped to about 1.75 million. However, these figures likely do not fully reflect the scale of migration, so keeping the voter registry up to date depends largely on the voters themselves.
Another important component of election preparations is assessing the condition of the electoral infrastructure. In the Odesa region, 1,434 regular and 61 special polling stations have been established. Despite regular Russian attacks, nearly 97.5% of the buildings housing polling stations remain usable. At the same time, two buildings have been completely destroyed, 14 have been damaged (and require restoration), and another 11 were damaged but have already been restored. In addition, nine buildings have fallen into disrepair. Consequently, the government will also have to address practical issues related to organizing the voting process.
Another issue remains the accessibility of polling stations. In the Odesa region, nearly 12,000 voters are listed in the voter registry as unable to move independently. At the same time, only a small fraction of polling stations fully meet accessibility criteria for people with visual or hearing impairments or for those who use wheelchairs. Nearly 27% of polling stations do not meet these requirements at all.
Another important group consists of veterans, of whom there are more than 42,000 living in the Odesa region today. For many of them, participating in the first postwar elections will be not only the exercise of a constitutional right but also a symbol of a return to civilian life; therefore, the electoral system must be prepared to accommodate their needs, as well as those of people with disabilities, older voters, and voters with limited mobility, among others.
The first postwar elections will require the state to conduct a comprehensive review of the entire electoral infrastructure: from updating data in the Voter Registry to ensuring the physical accessibility of polling stations and creating conditions under which every citizen can exercise their right to vote without hindrance. At the same time, part of the responsibility for ensuring the ability to exercise their right to vote lies with the voters themselves: to do this, they need to check their information in the Voter Registry now and, if necessary, update it. The first post-war elections will begin not on Election Day, but much earlier, so both the state and its citizens should prepare for them well in advance.
This material was created as part of the project “Every Voter Matters: Updating Ukraine’s State Voter Registry for Inclusive Democracy,” implemented by the OPORA Civil Network with financial support from the German Federal Foreign Office.
Євгенія Генова
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