Mykolaiv Regional Council tests purchased voting system with identification of each deputy

The Mykolaiv Regional Council has started testing a new online voting system «Voice» at meetings of deputy commissions.

This became known during a meeting of the commission on social policy, healthcare and protection of veterans' rights, according to NikVesti.

Tetiana Labartkava, manager of the executive office of the regional council, explained that from now on, all remote meetings — both of commissions and sessions — will be held through a new electronic system. According to her, the «Voice» system allows draft decisions to be uploaded directly to the deputies' personal accounts, and each deputy has already received personal login details.

«The software was purchased in accordance with the Local Government Development Programme and has already been implemented in the work of the regional council. To harmonise the procedures, we propose to amend the regulations and specify that the online voting system» will be used for remote meetings,» said Tetiana Labartkava.

As a reminder, the deputies supported the decision to purchase the system at the previous session.

According to Prozorro data, in early October, the regional council purchased services for the development and implementation of an online voting platform for 320,000 hryvnias.

The supplier was Vasyl Zhuravinskyi, a private entrepreneur, who undertook to install the software by 31 October 2025.

The software includes a full set of functions for holding meetings, complies with the regional council's regulations and ensures automatic recording of all procedures.

The main features include:

• Electronic registration of deputies, technical minutes, recording of all meeting events.
• Speech recording, speaker queue, speech timer, automatic giving the floor to the speaker.
• Electronic agenda generation, creation and editing of draft resolutions, amendments, and annexes.
• Uploading documents in various formats: PDF, DOCX, XLSX, RTF, etc.
• Roll call voting, display of results on the screen, and automatic generation of minutes.
• Search for votes, generate statistics, attendance ratings and reports for each deputy.
• Guest mode — for viewing documents without the right to vote.
• Fixation of conflicts of interest, which is automatically reflected in the minutes.
• Chat for exchanging messages between deputies and the chairman.
• Video recording and broadcasting of meetings on YouTube.
• Automatic backups after each meeting.
• Publication of data in open data format (JSON).
• Information protection

The documentation states that backups will be stored on the regional council's equipment. The vendor also provides 12 months of warranty support, consultations, elimination of technical defects and regular updates.

As a reminder, on 30 October, in Mykolaiv, the deputies gathered in the session hall and held the first meeting of the council in a partially in-person format in almost four years. The meeting was held in the small hall of the executive committee, where workstations were set up for the deputies.

It should be noted that in August, NikVesti drew attention to the fact that since about June, the city council has not shown the faces of the deputies as a confirmation of their personal presence at the meetings of the sessions, which have been held via video conferencing for four years.

The recordings of the sessions held on 26 June, 17 July, 31 July and 28 August do not show that the deputies actually attended the meeting, except for those who spoke. Consequently, it is also impossible to verify whether the required number of MPs was actually present for the session. In response to the media publication, in September, during an online meeting of the Mykolaiv City Council, the faces of all deputies were broadcast.

In turn, Tetiana Dombrovska, a member of the city council from the party «Servant of the People», published the minutes of the session of 30 January, where the voting table for one of the decisions shows 28 votes «for», which is the minimum required quorum. However, in the list of deputies who supported the decision, the name of the Council member Yevhen Pavlovych is indicated twice.

After that, the secretary of the city council said that an internal investigation would be conducted into the matter.

Falko also said that 6 million hryvnias was needed to purchase a new voting system for the deputies. Currently, voting takes place via Zoom, a video conferencing service.