site.btaOctober 27 Elections in Bulgaria: the Rules and the Figures

Bulgarians at home and abroad are going to the polls on October 27 to elect their new lawmakers. These are the country's seventeenth national parliamentary elections since the start of democratic changes in 1989 and the eleventh to be held before the legislature has served its full four-year term in office.

Here are the rules and some numbers:

Voters

According to the information available from the Central Election Commission as of October 25, a total of 6,601,262 people are eligible to vote for the 51th National Assembly.

Voter registration is passive. The electoral rolls list people according to their permanent address in Bulgaria.

Contestants

The 240 seats in the next, 51st Ordinary National Assembly, are contested by 4,855 candidates (1,377 women and 3,478 men), or 20.2 per seat.

Candidate qualifications for the National Assembly are more or less the same as voter qualifications, except for the higher minimum age (21 years by polling day). For the first time, under the latest amendments to the Constitution adopted in December 2023, holders of dual Bulgarian and another nationality are also able to contest seats in the country's legislature provided they have been resident in Bulgaria during the last eighteen months.

A total of 28 entities have been registered for participation in the October 27 elections. Nineteen parties (on a straight ticket), nine coalitions and one independent candidate stand in the parliamentary elections.

A total of 1,176 candidates are running in two constituencies.

Election System

National Representatives are elected from candidate lists according to a semi-proportional system.

Each party or coalition that has gained no less than 4% of the valid votes within Bulgaria and abroad and each independent candidate that has gained valid votes which are no less than the constituency electoral quota, are allocated National Assembly seats using the largest remainder method (Hare-Niemeyer). The same method is applied for the allocation of MEP seats, but there is no set electoral threshold there. Effectively, a contestant needs to have gained at least 5.8% of the valid votes (100% divided by 17 seats) to be elected.

Voters may express a single preference for a candidate on a party list: to be moved up on the list, such a candidate must get more than 7% of the valid votes for the relevant list in the national parliamentary elections. If no preference is expressed, it is presumed that the voter has agreed with the ranking of candidates on the list. Voters abroad are not able to mark preferences.

For the purposes of national parliamentary elections, Bulgaria is divided into 31 multi-member constituencies. A fixed number of seats (varying from 16 to 4) is assigned to each multi-member constituency.

Balloting in Bulgaria and Abroad

In Bulgaria, the polls open at 7:00 a.m. and are declared closed by the Central Election Commission at 9:00 p.m. for the country's territory.

The same time span applies to the voting abroad - only reckoned by local time. The earliest to open are the sections in Oakland and Christchurch, New Zealand, at 9:00 p.m. Bulgarian time on October 26 (7:00 a.m. on October 27 local time). The last to close will be the section in San Francisco, California: at 6:00 a.m. Bulgarian time on October 28 (8:00 p.m. on October 27 local time).

Domestically, balloting is taking place at 12,879 voting sections (including 293 mobile ballot boxes and 209 sections in hospitals).

Overseas voting sections total 719. The countries with the most voting sections are Turkiye (168), the UK (112) and Germany (66).

In Bulgaria, citizens are able to vote only in the area where their present address is located. Outside Bulgaria, eligible voters can exercise their franchise at any voting section of their choice without prior registration.

Voting is de jure compulsory, but the voting obligation is de facto unenforceable after the Constitutional Court determined in 2017 that the penalty for non-voters (which consists in removal from the electoral roll for the next elections of the same type) was unconstitutional.

Voting: by Paper or Machine

Voters have an option to use a paper ballot or a voting machine. Machines are available in voting sections with over 300 voters.

Machine voting is available in 9,353 domestic sections out of a total of 12,879, and in 157 out of the 719 overseas sections.