Bulgaria's Regional Devt Minister Confesses to Omissions in Electoral Rolls

Regional Development Minister Lilyana Pavlova has said that people were left out of electoral rolls at the October 23 elections due to technical errors. Photo by BGNES

Bulgaria's Regional Development Minister, who is in charge of the Directorate General of Civil Registration and Administrative Service (GRAO), has admitted that there were cases of unfounded removal of names from electoral rolls at the October 23 presidential and local elections.

Lilyana Pavlova attributed the errors to the faulty system for civil registration and insisted that the Civil Registration Act and the Election Code must be amended.

A check ordered by Prime Minister Boyko Borisov prior to the first round of the elections revealed that people had been taken off voter lists without legal justification.

According to Pavlova, a letter was sent to the mayors, instructing them to examine the matter and re-enter the 12 000 names that had been removed.

The Regional Development Minister said that around 11 000 of the total of 12 000 had been included in electoral rolls as a result.

"There are cases of people missing from voters lists for no good reason, but this is a responsibility of the municipal civil registration units, GRAO does not play any role in the matter," Pavlova argued.

She explained that GRAO was in charge of summarizing the data submitted by municipal administrations.

Another method of data collection deployed by GRAO, Pavlova specified, involved reports of the Interior Ministry about people with current address registration abroad and people who had applied for an ID card.

At the first round of the elections on Sunday it turned out that people with new ID cards featuring a permanent address had not been included in electoral rolls and could not vote for mayor and municipal councilors.

We need your support so Novinite.com can keep delivering news and information about Bulgaria! Thank you!