Bulgarian Expats Outraged by Authorities Impeding Voting Abroad

Bulgarians abroad have the right to vote on October 23 to elect the country's new president. File photo

The members of the initiative "We Want to Vote" have sent a letter to Prime Minister, Boyko Borisov, and to over 100 Bulgarian Ambassadors to alert them about hurdles and refusals to open election polls abroad.

Bulgarians abroad have the right to vote on October 23 to elect the country's new president.

"The Central Electoral Commission and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are creating obstacles for Bulgarians outside the country, who are wishing to vote," the letter reads.

According to the Election Code, 20 applications are needed in order to open a voting poll in a country where Bulgaria has a Consular Office or diplomatic representation, while where there is no such representation, the number of required applications is 100.

The deadline to submit the above said applications is Tuesday, September 27.

Bulgarians residing abroad will be able to cast their vote if there is an open poll in their area even if they had not submitted an application.

According to the letter, sent by the "We Want to Vote" initiative, there are a number of cases when diplomatic missions have refused the applications or have argued about their validity.

"The refusal to accept as valid applications which are filled in full compliance with the law is contradictory to both – the clearly stated intentions of lawmakers in Bulgaria to facilitate elections abroad and the Constitution, which guarantees election rights for choosing the country's president to all Bulgarian citizens, including those living abroad," the authors of the letter point out.

According to information from "We Want to Vote," several Embassies have told Bulgarian expats, who sent online applications that they have not used the correct blank form, which the members of the initiative counter with the explanation that "the law and the majority of legal practice in the process of validating/admitting a document under a blank form do not mandate to have the exact reproduction of a graphic form, but rather the presence of all obligatory requisites, "clearly required by the law."

In the letter to Prime Minister Borisov, the authors point out that CEK issued a decision in July, not based on any legal grounds, which will now be used to strike as invalid thousands of applications that otherwise fulfill all requirements of the Elections Code.

"The motives for the restrictions imposed by CEK sound ridiculous, such as "there is not enough disc space to collect the applications if there are under a format different than the one used by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And this is happening in a country ranked number 3 in the world by internet speed; a country boasting ambitions to have an online government after 10 years of failed attempts and hundreds of millions of BGN from taxpayers money wasted. We are unwavering in not letting CEK and the Foreign Ministry to continue to make up numerous hurdles, not based on any law, and keep passing the ball with the Ministry citing the CEK decision, regardless of the fact the law postulates that only Ambassadors and Consuls can decide on the validity of the applications," Krasimir Gadzhokov, a Bulgarian-born IT specialist, living in Toronto, Canada and front-runner of the "We Want to Vote" initiative is says in a letter to the media.

The full text of the letter, in Bulgarian, sent from the initiative to Borisov can be found HERE.

Meanwhile, the site For Fair Elections alarmed that they have received information that the Bulgarian Embassy in France has missed the deadline to request permission to hold elections in the city of Lyon – the deadline was August 13 – 70 days before the elections. According to a report of the Foreign Ministry, by August 13, the Embassy has requested to have election polls only in Paris, Strasbourg, Marseilles, Lille and Toulouse, omitting Lyon despite numerous reminders from the Bulgarian diaspora there.

The information from For Fair Elections comes amidst an avalanche of reports from all over Bulgaria about mass violations of the Elections Code

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