16,5% of Bulgaria's 2009 EP Votes Were "Controlled"

About 16,5% of Bulgaria's voters in the 2009 European Elections were "controlled". Photo by BGNES

The total number of the votes in Bulgaria's 2009 European Elections that were bought or otherwise controlled was about 360 000.

The news was announced by Bulgarian sociologist Antoniy Galabov who was part of a research project estimating the weight of the so called "controlled vote", i.e. the number of voters who were either bought, or were otherwise coerced into voting, for example, with their employer threatening to fire them unless they supported a certain political party.

On a scale of 0 to 10, 0 meaning totally "controlled vote", and 10 meaning totally free of control voting. According to Galabov, Bulgaria's 2009 EP Vote ranked at 5,6 on this scale.

He did say that that the trend was more positive than negative as the research project showed that the full potential of the "controlled vote" in Bulgaria was about 640 000 votes, and that it was not realized.

Thus, only about 360 000 votes were cast by people who had been paid or threatened with firing, which is about 16,5% of the total number of cast votes.

Galabov pointed to certain Roma quarters around the country and certain factories in Southern and Southwest Bulgaria as striking cases of "controlled votes".

 

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