Glavchev to Meet Radev on Caretaker Government Proposal; Consecutive Elections Not Possible
In line with constitutional protocol, President Rumen Radev will convene with Dimitar Glavchev, the candidate for acting Prime Minister, tomorrow
At least 850,000 Bulgarians listed in the electoral register do not have the right to vote, Professor Petar Ivanov from the Center for Demographic Policy claimed.
"The National Statistical Institute has published data regarding the population of Bulgaria, according to which those who have the right to vote are 6,926,716 people, but CIA's data showed that the number of persons was 5.862 million," Prof. Ivanov told Bulgarian NovaTv.
"According to the Central Election Commission, the people entitled to vote are 6.533 million, meaning that there are some 850,000 'dead souls'," he explained.
Central Election Commission's spokesman Tsvetozar Tomov claimed that the problem was that fewer people are listed in the electoral register now compared to the previous elections.
"This is due to the fact that not all Bulgarians are allowed to vote in the European Parliamentary elections," Tomov said, adding that Bulgarians living in Turkey, for example , do not have the right to vote in the upcoming elections.
"The problem of illegitimate voters has been discussed for 20 years. The main reason for having such a wide gap between the actual number of people living in Bulgaria, and the people who appear in the election lists, is that there is a great number of Bulgarians who are registered as residents of the country, but the Central Election Commission has no information about their address abroad," Tomov said.
According to him, in order to solve this problem, an active voters registration must be introduced.
According to Tomov, there is no threat to the legitimacy of the upcoming elections.
About 1 200 000 "phantom voters" can be found in Bulgarian elections lists, Mihail Konstantinov, formerly a high-profile official in charge of elections, believes.
Bulgaria's Central Electoral Commission (CEC) starts receiving documents for the registration of political parties and coalitions for the early elections on October 5.
A majority in the European Parliament has approved Jean-Claude Juncker to be President of the European Commission, reports BBC.
The European Parliament is expected to approve on Tuesday the nomination of former Luxembourg PM Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European Commission.
Former Environment Minister Iskra Mihaylova has become the nomination of the European Parliament's ALDE group to chair the Regional Policy Committee.
The European Parliament has re-elected Martin Schulz for a second presidential term, with 409 votes from the 751 MEPs.