site.btaExperts Discuss Election Code Revisions at Roundtable in Parliament

At a roundtable in Parliament on Tuesday, experts discussed the introduction of active voter registration and purging the electoral rolls of ghost voters.

The working group held its first meeting last Tuesday. It was set up by the parliamentary groups to help consolidate into a single piece of draft legislation the five amending bills that the legislature adopted on first reading in early January 2025. The principal proposals were to introduce vote counting commissions, to purchase ballot scanning machines, and to switch to machine voting only.
  
Highlights on Tuesday's discussions:

Central Election Commission Chair Kameliya Neykova: The Commission has asked the National Statistical Institute (NSI) for information about the number of Bulgarian nationals resident abroad, but NSI does not have such information because they are subject to census in their state of residence. That is why it is impossible to determine the number of seats that are decided by the expatriate vote.  

Former Constitutional Court judge Emilia Drumeva: If active registration is introduced, some voter may complain that they have been deprived of the right to vote, and the measure may be declared unconstitutional.

Georgi Penchev (Organization for Fair Elections): An investment must be made in an updatable electronic electoral role. This will not prevent the full range of violations but will reduce them considerably. 

Foreign Ministry representative: At the latest elections [in October 2024), 90% of the voters were added to the electoral rolls. The voting abroad cost between BNG 5 million and 6 million.

Election expert Mihail Konstantinov: The so-called ghost voters are the problem in Bulgaria. Expatriate voters exceed one million.

Experts argue that it is high time that a link was established among the various registers in this country: the Interior Ministry's register on nationals currently outside Bulgaria's territory, the Foreign Ministry's register on nationals who registered abroad to vote in elections, and the registers of the National Health Insurance Fund and the National Social Security Institute. 

Participants in the discussion argued for the need to produce documents issued by expert medical board when a decision is made on setting up mobile voting sections for people with disabilities. In their opinion, a particular person should be responsible for this.