site.btaAhead of Ruling on Challenge of Legitimacy of October 2024 Parliamentary Elections, Constitutional Court Seeks Observations from Petitioners

Ahead of ruling on the merits of a case challenging the legitimacy of the October 27, 2024 parliamentary elections, Bulgaria's Constitutional Court gave the petitioners an opportunity to get familiar with the evidence in the case between February 19 and 21, 2025. Next, they will have until February 25 to submit observations on the merits of the case, according to a ruling of the Court dated February 17.

On November 26, 2024, the Constitutional Court admitted for consideration on the merits five petitions challenging the legitimacy of the early parliamentary elections held a month earlier. A petition submitted by There Is Such a People sought a recount of the results in 52 voting sections. Another challenge, by the Velichie Party, insisted on a complete annulment of the elections or, in the alternative, a partial annulment. Next, Continue the Change also asked for a recount and recalculation of the voting results. Three more petitions were submitted, signed by varying combinations of MPs of three parliamentary groups: Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria, Democracy for Rights and Freedoms, and BSP-United Left.

The Constitutional Court merged the five complaints into a single constitutional case and ordered a recount of the votes cast by paper ballots and machine-voting ballots in 1,777 voting sections. The expert witnesses were asked to establish whether the valid votes cast matched the entry in the section commission tally sheet and whether the valid machine-voting ballots matched the data in the memory of the machine-voting technical device. The experts were also supposed to establish whether the number of invalid ballots entered in the tally sheets of 442 voting sections corresponds to the number of invalid ballots delivered by section commissions to constituency commissions. The deadline for the completion of the expert examination was January10, 2025.

By Monday's ruling, the Constitutional Court added to the evidence in the case ten reports of a check of the election records in five constituencies and 13 tabulated reports of relevant data from the election records in seven constituencies.