Bulgaria's Electoral Rolls Haunted by 10% of 'Dead Souls' - Report

A total of 10% of the Bulgarians listed in the major cites' voter rolls for the upcoming presidential and local elections in the country are "phantoms", a local paper has alarmed.

Bulgaria's  Citizens Registration and Administrative Services has listed thousands more potential voters than  the recent census carried out by the  country's National Statistical Institute would suggest, the local Dnevnik daily has found out.

The institutions keeping track of Bulgaria's population are not obliged to exchange data, the paper points out, adding that the inaccuracies may lead to large-scale manipulations.

People are entitled to share whatever date they want to and there are no tools available for verifying it, representatives of the Citizens Registration and Administrative Services have commented.

At the beginning of August, Mihail Konstantinov, a Professor in Mathematics and a Deputy Chairman of Bulgaria's Central Electoral Commission (CEC) in 2003, revealed that voter rolls in the country contained a total of 6 800 000 names, while the National Statistical Institute had listed a total of 6,100,000 Bulgarians who are eligible to vote, which left a total of 700,000 fake entries.