site.btaParliament Passes Conclusively Election Code Amendments

Parliament Passes Conclusively Election Code Amendments

Sofia, October 26 (BTA) - The total number of voting sections in EU Member States will no longer be limited to 35 per country, Bulgaria's Parliament resolved on Wednesday, passing conclusively amendments to the Election Code.

The 35-section-cap was kept only for the countries outside the EU, including the US, Canada and Turkey. "Bulgarian nationals are inadmissibly divided into classes: first class (those living in Bulgaria), second class (those living in the EU), and third class (those living in all other countries)," Hamid Hamid MP of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) commented. He said that the members of his parliamentary group are ready to challenge these provisions before the Constitutional Court.

Another MRF MP, Djeihan Ibryamov MP, also objected to the retained limit of 35 sections per country for non-EU member states. "You degraded Bulgarian citizens to a status lower than refugees," he argued.

The motion to use a second ballot box in the sections abroad if necessary was not seconded. BSP-Left Bulgaria and the Reformist Bloc expressed doubts that multiple ballot boxes may cause chaos and make it possible to rig the process.

Valeri Simeonov MP of the Patriotic Front commented that a second ballot box may be a relief, more than a long queue. Theoretically, it is possible to vitiate the elections in the last minutes. Simeonov also pointed out that electoral rolls will have to be revised a fortnight before polling day.

Just as in the effective version of the Code, the "None Of The Above" votes in parliamentary elections will be subtracted from the total number of valid votes so as not to raise the 4 per cent electoral threshold for entry into the legislature. In presidential and mayoral elections, however, such votes will count as valid.

Explaining why he voted against, Filip Popov MP of BSP-Left Bulgaria said that "this square [None Of The Above] should have been scrapped, you can't count it in one type of elections and not count it in another."

Voting in the presidential elections, in the national referendum and in the mayoral by-elections in Sofia's Mladost Borough on November 6 will take place in one and the same voting section, according to another provision passed on Wednesday.