site.btaThere Is Such a People to Demand Election Code Changes to Ensure Voter List Accuracy

In a Facebook post on Friday, There Is Such a People (TISP) leader Slavi Trifonov wrote that from day one of the 51st National Assembly, his party will do everything within its power to immediately amend the Election Code. "Whoever does not support us will show us clearly that they have an interest in the 'dead souls'," the post reads. Trifonov was referring to inaccuracies in the official voter lists stemming from deceased voters and people who no longer have the right to vote still being on the lists.

The latest census in Bulgaria, conducted in late 2023, shows that Bulgaria's population numbers 6,445,481, Trifonov recalled. This number includes everyone: newborns, children, adults, men and women, he specified. "However, when it is time for elections, I hear that those with the right to vote exceed 6,601,000 people, by over 200,000 people more than the country's population," he wrote in his post, and asked where this difference stems from and why the voter turnout is low.

According to Trifonov, the answer to these questions lies in voter lists brimming with "dead souls", who already number over 1,500,000. "By ''dead souls' we mean not only deceased people who, as it turns out, have suddenly voted for a given party abroad. This anomaly sometimes allows some 1,500 people to register at one and the same address, usually in a Roma neighbourhood. These 'dead souls' create the illusion of a low voter turnout and, thus, vote buying and the corporate vote manage to win against your independent and free vote," Trifonov wrote. In his words, the voter lists should have been updated a long time ago to remove "this weapon used by dirty hands".

He called for an update of the voter lists to remove non-existent voters. "If we accept that the current voter turnout was 38%, once we clean up the lists, it will be much higher and then everyone who thinks they can buy votes, will go to the political junkyard," the TISP leader argued.