Top Bulgarian Socialist: New Election Code Guarantees Fair Vote

The new Election Code in Bulgaria provides for the very first time an opportunity to vote for personalities rather than political party lists, by using preferential voting.

The statement was made by the Deputy Speaker of the Bulgarian Parliament, Maya Manolova, in an interview for the Bulgarian National Television on Saturday.

In the next general elections, Bulgarian people will be able to vote for individuals thus, if a candidate receives enough votes in an electoral district, the ballot could be rearranged so that he or she would be ranked among the top runners and enter the Parliament," said she.

Manolova further promised that vote buying and manipulating will be reduced by plans to introduce electronic voting and a new type of voting ballots to be printed under the supervision of the Central Bank, in its printing facility.

Each ballot will have a unique number that will be removed when it is inserted in the election box.

By introducing the above, the government will try to convince people that their vote counts and will not be subject to manipulation.

The MP from the Bulgarian Socialist Party, BSP, explained that, most likely, in the next general elections, a number of people will still have to cast paper ballots as machine voting would not be implemented in full.

She commented that one of the important changes in the Electoral Code should addresses the so-called "dead souls," whose removal from voter lists is complicated by the lack of information about these people.

Manolova said that in recent months many people, including NGOs, private citizens, lawmakers and parliamentary committees have worked hard on the new Electoral Code, however, it still needed some fine-tuning.

On Thursday, she stated that by the end of the current plenary session (end of the year) Bulgaria could very well have a brand new Election Code.

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