site.btaMPs Adopt Five Bills of Amendments to Election Code on First Reading

Parliament adopted five bills of amendments to the Election Code at first reading on Wednesday. The one by Kostadin Kostadinov from Vazrazhdane gathered 171 votes in favour, 45 were against, one MP abstained. The bill submitted by Toshko Yordanov of There is Such A People (TISP) was supported by 202 MPs, 8 were against, 9 abstained.

The amendments, proposed by Atanas Zafirov of BSP-United Left received 200 votes in favour, 3 against, 15 MPs abstained. A total of 174 MPs voted in favour of the bill to amend and supplement the Election Code, submitted by Nadezhda Yordanova of Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB), 37 voted against and 9 abstained. The bill of CC-DB's Kiril Petkov received 172 votes in favour, 39 against and 6 abstained.

The Vazrazhdane bill abolishes the paper ballot and aims to limit the possibility of forming polling stations outside diplomatic and consular missions in countries outside the European Union, with the exception of up to 20 polling stations being opened per country. It also proposes to increase the size of the Central Election Commission (CEC) to 25 members.

According to Vazrazhdane, CEC's composition should reflect the proportional distribution of political parties in the National Assembly and should therefore be altered accordingly. Changes are being made to the rules for electronic applications, whereby only one application can be submitted from one IP address via the CEC website.

The bill proposes that the entry of election results and their final calculation should be carried out by state institutions and departments, and not, as before, by the Information Services. It also proposes to provide real-time video surveillance and video recording of the acceptance and verification of each of the minutes at the moment of their transmission by the sectional election commissions, as well as real-time video surveillance and video recording of the meetings of the municipal election commission. The requirement that members of the sectional election commission must have completed secondary education is introduced, and an increase in the remuneration of senior officials is proposed.

TISP's bill proposes that in the preparation of the voters' lists for all types of elections, only those persons eligible to vote in the relevant type of election should be included in them in accordance with data from the National Statistical Institute. It proposes that machine voting should be carried out with scanning machines and that, once the voter has uniquely marked his vote on a paper ballot paper, they will place it in the machine that will scan it.

Within 3 months of the bill being adopted, the Council of Ministers is to study and take the necessary action to provide the scanning machines for voting, the bill says. It also provides for the establishment of counting commissions to be appointed by district or municipal election commissions after consultations with the governor or mayor, respectively, depending on the type of election.  

It also proposes to increase the number of voters who can vote in a polling station from 1,000 to 2,000 and that video broadcasting in polling stations will be available throughout the election day. TISP's bill proposes to postpone the entry into force of the stand-alone constituency "Foreign".

BSP - United Left's bill introduces regional counting centres and active voter registration. Regional counting commissions will be appointed by the CEC. A new procedure for drawing up the electoral rolls through active registration is also envisaged. Municipal administrations will be competent to draw up the electoral rolls. This list will be supplemented by those who have actively registered up to 5 days before polling day to prevent anyone from being unable to vote due to administrative obstacles.

The CEC maintains a public register of voters and ensures that each Bulgarian citizen appears only once on the list at their permanent address to avoid errors and abuse. The bill proposes an experimental machine recount for the next parliamentary election. 

The amendments proposed by Nadezhda Yordanova from CC-DB also propose the creation of a counting commission for municipalities with voters included in the electoral roll up to 20,000 people, and when the number of voters exceeds 20,000, counting stations are created, with a counting commission being established at each station. The entire process of processing the election results shall be made available to all interested parties, including by live television broadcast. 

The bill, proposed by Kiril Petkov (CC-DB), provides for the counting of votes cast by paper ballot or by machine to be counted using reliable technical devices. The amendments also provides for the restoration of the provisions on voting by machines regarding the votes cast and their reflection in a printed record, in addition to the machine printing out control receipts. In the case of voting by paper ballot, the scanning and counting of the vote cast by a special optical device shall be introduced, which will allow a check to be made for incorrect completion of the paper ballot.

The bill abolishes hand counting, as the reports from the optical scanning devices and the electronic voting machine will be printed out immediately after the end of the election day and attached to the minutes of the polling station and subsequently the data will be summarized by the district election commissions and municipal election commissions respectively. It is envisaged to postpone for one year the entry into force of the provisions in order to ensure the introduction of an optical scanning device for paper ballot papers.

The bill also proposes that voting should be carried out by machines only in polling stations with more than 300 people. It also provides for a change in CEC membership to take into account political representation in each newly elected National Assembly.

In the course of the discussion TISP's Alexander Rashev pointed out that he considers completely untenable the statements of the representatives of the CC-DB, which impose the opinion that the changes in the Election Code are more important than those in the Judiciary Act. "The Code guarantees the representation of Bulgarian citizens", he explained.

Remzi Osman declared that his group - Democracy, Rights and Freedoms (DRF) - will not support any of the bills.

"Our view is to discuss the changes in the Code in a calmer time", Osman said and expressed concern that entire ballot boxes could disappear on the way to the counting commissions that are proposed to be set up. "Electoral rolls cannot be full of "dead souls", but it is another matter that they are made by permanent address", he noted. Another flaw he sees is the idea of limiting the ability to vote abroad.