These were the first elections held under the newly adopted Electoral Code, which provided a fully proportional electoral system at the both local and national levels.[4]
Kharkiv was divided into 7 districts with an unfixed amount of seats. Each party had to form two lists: the first is united for the entire city, and the second is for individual territorial districts. The party would receive a mandate if it overcomes the 5% threshold. In this case, the No.1 candidate on the list is guaranteed to receive a seat. Candidates who receive 25% or more of the electoral quota of their district get to the top of the list in descending order of the number of votes for them. In the case of an equal number of votes, the order of candidates will remain as determined by the party at the time of voting. After the candidates who passed to the council according to the quota, the rest are placed in the order determined by the party.
Electoral quota is the number of votes needed to obtain one seat. The electoral quota is determined by the territorial election commission. For this, the commission needed to divide the total number of votes for those parties that won at least 5 percent of the voters' votes and are now participating in the distribution of mandates by the number of mandates. The number of seats into which the electoral votes had to be divided is the difference between the number of seats in the council and the number of guaranteed seats for each party that entered the council (one seat per party).[4]
Mayoral candidates
Hennadiy Kernes - Kernes began his political career being elected to the Kharkiv City Council in 1998, serving three terms as the leader of the "New Kharkiv - New Opportunities" independent bloc.[5] In 2006 he was elected to the council as a member of the Party of Regions and had been the incumbent mayor of Kharkiv since he won the 2010 Ukrainian local elections.[6][7][8] Kernes was initially described as pro-Russian and was accused of organizing and supporting anti-Maidan forces in Kharkiv during Euromaidan.[9] After his criminal trial for allegedly torturing Euromaidan participants was dropped, Kernes pivoted to being pro-Ukrainian, switching his party affiliation to Revival and was able to win re-election in the 2015 Ukrainian local elections.[10][11][12] Kernes also unsuccessfully sought a seat in the Verkhovna Rada during the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election for the Opposition Bloc, getting only 3.23%, short of the 5% to enter parliament.[13] In late 2019 Kernes effectively took over a small local party, "Unitary European Ukraine" and transformed it into Kernes Bloc — Successful Kharkiv as a vehicle for him and his supporters to establish themselves as the primer political force within the city, not beholden to any existing national parties.[14][15]
Incumbent mayor and front runner Kernes saw his health rapidly deteriorate in the days before the election and was last seen in public on 23 August 2020.[25] On 17 September 2020 it was announced that Kernes was hospitalized in Germany for COVID-19 and he won the 25 October election from his hospital bed.[20] On 9 December 2020, Kernes was sworn in as mayor without being present and it was announced on 11 December that Kernes had suffered a kidney failure.[26] On 17 December, Kernes' close personal friend, Pavel Fuks, announced that Kernes had passed away due to complications of COVID-19, exasperated by his kidney failure.[27]Ihor Terekhov would take over the Kernes Block, and a snap election for mayor was scheduled for 2021.
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