Bulgaria Anticipates Official Vote Results as Chaos Nears End

Bulgaria's Central Electoral Commission (CEC – abbreviation is seen in Cyrillic) will finally announce the official results from the October 23 vote. Photo by BGNES

The post-election chaos in Bulgaria, which followed the October 23 presidential and local elections in the country, is inching towards conclusion Wednesday.

By mid-night Wednesday, the Central Electoral Commission, CEC, had processed the protocols of 261 municipalities out of a total of 264. Sofia, Sliven and Petrich are the ones that are behind, while the village of Treklevo in the western Kyustendil region had been the very first one to deliver protocols, the TV channel bTV reports.

At 9 pm Tuesday, the lines of voting polls election officials waiting to deliver the protocols to CEC were still long, but moving. The tensions and the fatigue, however, continued to take their toll, and a young woman from Burgas had been taken in an ambulance to the emergency room, after fainting at one of the counters.

Her colleagues told the bTV reporter that she skipped meals and drinking water over the huge workload.

12 counters remained open till midnight. 2 remained on duty after that time to wait for the protocols from the city of Sliven and the town of Petrich.

Several protocols have been returned to "their authors" to fix the mistakes.

Sofia's protocols were delayed over utter chaos and poor organization overrunning the Sofia Regional Election Commission, OIC.

Official results of the vote are to be finally announced later Wednesday – two days after Election Day, which is beyond the deadline set by the law.

CEC are still mulling how to avoid further disarray and violations of the election process at the runoff Sunday. The opposition Socialists claim the mistakes and the gaffes have been committed on purpose in order to manipulate the counting of ballots in favor of the ruling, center right Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB) party.

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