With paper for the National Assembly are 63.98% of voters (or 1,358,008 people) voted, and the remaining 39.02% (764,968 people) chose the machine devices. For reference, a year earlier, 59.12% voted with machines. This was announced by the Institute for the Development of the Public Environment.
This collapse is understandable given the highly controversial decision of the CEC to abolish machine voting hours before the first round of local elections in the fall of 2023. and returning them to use one week later.
The data show that in the parliamentary elections on Sunday, voters from the three constituencies in the city of Sofia most often decided to cast their vote by machine. Constituency 23 is leading with 61%, followed by constituency 24 with 58% and constituency 25 with 53%.
On the other pole in terms of using the machines are the voters in the Kardzhali regions– 14%, Razgrad – 16.3% and Targovishte – 17.9%.
Among the voters of the seven parties that receive representation in the new parliament, those of the DPS were the least likely to vote by machine. Only 9.5% of them preferred this technology, and for reference a year earlier their share was 40.19%.
On election day, the co-chairman of the party, Delyan Peevski, pointed out that he voted by paper because he preferred it that way. Although as early as 2019, the DPS was among the main proponents of the proposition that machine devices would eliminate accidental and/or malicious ballot counting errors and minimize the role of the human factor. At that time, Yordan Tsonev's statement from July 2019 became popular: “We want there to be no counting by human hands in the SIC”. Obviously, this thesis has long been incompatible with party interests.
Under 50% of the voters of GERB-SDS (27.04%), BSP (27.79%), Velichie (34.89%) and Vazrazhdane (39.71%) voted with the machine devices on Sunday.
The largest share of those who voted by machine is among the supporters of Continuing the Change – Democratic Bulgaria – 70.8%. More than half of the support for There is such a people – 55.8% came from machine voters.