The President submitted to the Rada a bill on a referendum

On June 9, 2020, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky submitted to the Parliament a draft law No. 3612 “On democracy through an all-Ukrainian referendum”. The President defined the document as urgent.

As noted in the explanatory note to the document, the all-Ukrainian referendum is one of the key institutions of direct democracy. Its authors remind that the history of Ukraine as a sovereign state began after the independence plebiscite was held in 1991. However, the law “On All-Ukrainian and Local Referendums”, which was then in force, needed to be updated after the adoption of the Constitution in 1996. The explanatory note to the bill specifies that the Law of Ukraine “On the All-Ukrainian Referendum” adopted in 2012 was declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court of Ukraine. The note states that as a result, a gap has formed in the legislation in the legal regulation of the institution of the all-Ukrainian referendum. This situation leads to the restriction of democracy and the exercise of the constitutional right of citizens to participate in the management of state affairs, to express their will in an all-Ukrainian referendum.

The following questions may be the subject of an all-Ukrainian referendum:

1) approval of the law on amendments to sections I, III, XIII of the Constitution of Ukraine (we are talking about general principles, elections and the referendum itself, as well as justice);

2) national importance;

3) on changing the territory of Ukraine;

4) on termination of the law of Ukraine or its separate provisions.

At the same time, an all-Ukrainian referendum is not allowed in relation to bills on taxes, budget and amnesty.

The key innovation of the bill is to determine the possibility of introducing electronic procedures in organizing and holding an all-Ukrainian referendum, including electronic voting. The Ministry of Digital Transformation has already joined in the development of a draft law on democracy in terms of the digitalization of certain elements of the referendum process. In particular, the bill provides:

• the ability for a voter to submit an application for support for holding a referendum in electronic form using an electronic signature;
• the ability to express will in a referendum by electronic voting;
• Electronic voting and counting of votes are carried out within a special area of electronic voting.

The bill also provides for the possibility of holding referendums at the request of the people. To do this, the initiative group that put forward the proposal must register with the Central Election Commission and begin collecting signatures. In order for the plebiscite to take place, the group must collect at least three million signatures of Ukrainian citizens in support of this initiative.