23: Clones and 1m ballots

With 37 parties and electoral bloc running for seats in the Kyiv Rada and nearly eighty candidates vying for the mayoral post in the capital city, voters will have to wrestle with meter-long ballots when they show up to vote on May 25.
The party/bloc ballot will not exceed 80 centimeters, according to the head of the territorial election commission Halyna Bilyk. It will be green in color, reported LIGABiznesInform on April 29.
But with 79 names on the mayoral ballot, voters will have to find their candidate’s name on a sheet of paper nearly 100 centimeters long. The hopefuls’ names will be listed alphabetically.

Clones & jokers
Electoral blocs numbered 30 and 23 both bear the name “Oleksandr Omelchenko” – the name of the man who served as Kyiv mayor for a decade while Leonid Kuchma was president of the country and during the Orange events. There will also be two Omelchenkos on the mayoral ballot: Oleksandr Oleksandrovych (former mayor) and self-nominated Leonid Vladimirovich Omelchenko.
The Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko (#25) is challenging a last-minute change of the “Kyivsky Proryv” name (#17) to “Bloc Tymoshenko Kyivsky Proryv.” The second Tymoshenko bloc is comprised of the municipal branches of the Slavic Party and the Union of Anarchists.
Byut’s man for mayor Oleksandr Turchynov said that his political force will turn to the courts if the Territorial Electoral Commission allows the additional Tymoshenko name on the ballot and in the campaign.

For the list of 37 party and bloc names see: http://news.liga.net/news/N0822574.html
All 79 mayoral candidates: http://news.liga.net/news/N0822379.html
Byut’s beef: http://news.liga.net/news/N0822677.html