The last census was in September 2021, according to a rough estimate, the number of people who died before the elections will be over half a million people. This means that there is a great risk that people who have died will be included (editor's note - in the voter lists) and then we will really get “dead souls”. This was stated by the Chairman of the National Statistical Institute Atanas Atanasov during the second reading of the bill on amendments to the Electoral Code, which is being considered by the Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, BTA wrote.
Atanasov commented on the proposal of “There is such a people” to include in the electoral rolls all Bulgarian citizens who meet the conditions under the constitution “according to the data of the National Statistical Institute based on the results of the last population census.“ He added that the difference between the population calculated by the NSI and the population that has the right to vote under the constitution is large.
According to him, the NSI has the right to provide only summarized information, not individual data, which is prohibited by a European regulation and by the laws on statistics and the census. Atanasov pointed out that the NSI has no legal basis to provide personal data to the population.
The expert from the GRAO Petya Bulanova pointed out that the proposal may not be very reasonable, but if it is adopted, it would be good to explicitly regulate what data the NSI should provide and to whom. She noted that the data from the GRAO population register are up-to-date. Bulanova added that many Bulgarian citizens who were not counted will have to go through a procedure for submitting an application for inclusion in the electoral list.
During the debate, it also became known that about 1 million people were not counted in the last national census for various reasons.
According to Nikoleta Kuzmanova from the ITN, the European regulation allows the exchange of confidential data and there is no problem for this to happen between two state institutions. He also added that there are exceptions in the Statistics Act regarding the data.
Branimir Balachev from GERB-SDF stated that it is best for the GRAO and the NSI to cooperate, noting that the GRAO data is the most accurate and through them the deceased will be removed from the lists.
Nadezhda Yordanova and Stoyu Stoev from PP-DB raised the question of whether, if the NSI and GRAO work together, which of the two lists has priority, especially if there is a contradiction, as it is not clear by what criteria, what procedure and who makes the decision. Also, if you are counted in one settlement and then change your address to another MIR, where will you vote?
"Vazrazhdane" noted that they will not support this proposal. According to Tsveta Rangelova, it is frivolous to limit or question the guaranteed right to vote of Bulgarian citizens. We have concerns about the desire for uncontrolled additions to the voter lists, in small polling stations in small settlements, where people know each other very well, they could easily add voters, she said.
Yuliana Mateeva from "Velichy" indicated that she also would not support the proposal and noted that, against the background of all the other colossal changes, reformatting the lists in such a way would be yet another additional complication.
During the debates, questions were raised by the PP-DB and "Vazrazhdane" about what the software of the optical devices will be, as well as the status of the machines – the impossibility for them and the software to be state property, owned by “Information Services“, due to restrictions in the law.
We have reached the point where the Electoral Code is so detailed that it has become an instruction, a law is not written like that, said Nadezhda Yordanova from PP-DB and added that it cannot be detailed for some things and not for others.
Yuliana Mateeva from “Velichy“ asked what will happen to the Electoral Code if voting with optical devices does not work and the current version is switched to, as the norms related to it have been dropped from the code. The chairwoman of the legal committee Anna Alexandrova commented that the issue will be resolved through a text in transitional and closed provisions, which will regulate that when the old version is returned, the procedure should be the same as before. She recalled that the BSP had made a request to propose that the changes come into force in 2027.
The meeting of the legal committee is the third in a row to consider the proposed changes to the Electoral Code. Today, it began an hour late due to a lack of quorum, and is still ongoing. "Vazrazhdane" has asked the chairwoman of the committee, Anna Alexandrova, several times to adjourn the meeting due to the late hour, as well as because the proposals for changes are anonymous, and the majority does not participate in the debates on the texts.