Bulgaria covers the political indicators of honesty in the elections, there is a known problem in the administration.
This is what Daniel Stefanov, an expert on electoral processes and a lecturer at the NBU, told the BNR.
"I don't know why the issue of cleaning up technical issues from the electoral process so quickly fades out of public focus shortly after the election. One of the explanations is that electoral irregularities are already part of the party apparatus, which explains losses, victories, and the moment the explanation is finished, these electoral irregularities simply fall off the agenda," he commented.
The expert noted that there is also the moment of getting used to this type of violations. However, according to him, the effect of this is very bad. He also cited a study by the international network "Gallup", published a few days before election day, according to which Bulgaria ranks last in terms of trust in the fairness of elections in the world. "This is a very big problem that is getting worse," warned Stefanov.
In general, such violations at the sectional level do not lead to serious changes in the election result, because the scale is very small, the expert expressed his opinion regarding the clips with recorded election violations. In his words, our system is made to "hold" such minor violations, because the result is determined at the central level, not at the municipal or constituency level.
Daniel Stefanov also noted the case of the "Velichie" party, which did not reach 27 ballots to enter the next National Assembly. This case puts the Bulgarian electoral system under serious pressure, he emphasized and expressed the opinion that this pours water into the mill of mistrust in the elections. For him, the right decision is to go the institutional route and the party to check the results.
"Really 27 votes is a very small difference. The system is not perfect and can be wrong by such orders of magnitude. If the party finds such errors, it can approach the Constitutional Court and initiate the recounting procedure of various sections. For me, it is very important that we focus on the institutional mechanisms for solving these problems, and not just create connections that we don't know if they exist or not.
We have a problem with the quality of the sectional election commissions and this has been a problem for years, Stefanov also said. According to him, the CEC has a mechanism to ensure that the entry of the data cannot be politically influenced. According to him, the Commission should explain about this mechanism.
"There is a lot of accumulated doubt and mistrust of the election administration. I think we have to deal with this issue quite consistently. Unilateral changes in this sense of the election rules do not work.
A decision to raise the threshold for entering the parliament cannot be taken so easily, the election expert was categorical. According to him, both parties and society are not ready for such a decision.
"If we are going to seek a more complex change of the electoral system, such changes should be made through serious public and political discussion and reaching a consensus about it".
In the words of Daniel Stefanov, there is no winner in these elections. Bulgaria is in the same political crisis it was in before the elections, he pointed out. He needs some kind of government to bring peace to society.