The party was presented to the public on 16 May 2019 in Kyiv and announced it would run in the upcoming July 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election. Legally, Holos is an "upgraded" version of the party "Platform of Initiatives" that was founded in 2015 to take part in the 2015 Ukrainian local elections. The creation of the party marks Vakarchuk’s second venture into politics – he previously served as an MP for almost a year after being elected in the 2007 Ukrainian parliamentary election. The party was first featured in the opinion polling carried out from 16–21 May 2019, its rating was 4.6%. The party held its first congress on 8 June 2019, at which part of its party list for the then forthcoming elections was announced. The top 10 candidates were as follows: 1) Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, 2) Yulia Klimenko, 3) Kira Rudyk, 4) Yaroslav Zheleznyak, 5) Oleksandra Ustinova, 6) Oleh Makarov, 7) Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, 8) Serhiy Rakhmanin, 9) Solomiya Bobrovska, and 10) Olha Stefanyshyna. A few days later, on 12 June, the party withdrew two of its constituency candidates because they had "affiliated with or co-operated with pro-Russian forces", namely Ukrainian Choice and the Opposition Bloc. Party leader Vakarchuk had assured on 19 May 2019 that no incumbent MPs would be on the party's list for the 2019 parliamentary election. However, such deputies, whose political views coincided with the party's ideology, were allowed to be elected by majority constituencies. In the election, four incumbent MPs stood as candidates for the party in majority constituencies: Victoria Voytsitska, Pavlo Rizanenko, Victoria Ptashnyk, and Leonid Yemets. None of them were elected. In the 2019 parliamentary election, the party finished with 5.82% of the vote, 17 MPs elected nationwide and three MPs elected in a constituency. 47.6% of the party's elected deputies are woman. The party's faction leader is Serhiy Rakhmanin. On 11 March 2020, Vakarchuk stepped aside as head of the party. Voice selected Kira Rudyk as its new leader. Vakarchuk left parliament in June 2020.
Political positions
The party declares a democratic approach, supporting the separation of money from politics. In economic matters, the party is in favor of introducing a tax on withdrawn capital, a land market, privatization of state-owned enterprises, and the fight against illegal customs and tax schemes. Party leader Vakarchuk stated on 10 June 2019 that the party wants to abolish the current Ukrainian election constituencies, instead favoring a shift to full open list proportional representation. According to the analysis of human rights activist Volodymyr Yavorsky, the party program pays great attention to human rights, while there are no populist statements in it. According to experts from the Centre for Economic Strategy Dmytro Yablonovsky and Daria Mikhailishin, the program focuses on combating corruption through de-oligarchization and by increasing the efficiency of the state through the introduction of modern technologies. In November 2019, the party's parliamentary faction stated that because Ukraine could not regain control of separatist Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic and Russian annexedCrimea it should "freeze the conflicts", abandon the Minsk Agreements and focus on strengthening its own positions.
