Phantom Voters in Bulgaria 'Surpass 1.2 M'
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) announced at a press conference on Wednesday evening the final official results of the European elections in the country.
According to them, the former ruling centrist-right party GERB gets six seats in the European Parliament, the current ruling Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) – four seats, their coalition partners from the Turkish-ethnic party Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS) – four seats, the new party of the journalist-turned-politician Nikolai Barekov – Bulgaria Without Censure – two seats and the right opposition coalition the Reformist Bloc – one.
Voter turnout was 36.15%.
The final results are as follows:
GERB: 30.4%, 680 838 votes
Coalition for Bulgaria (BSP): 18.93%, 424 037 votes
DPS: 17.27%, 386 725 votes
BWC: 10.66%, 238 629 votes
The Reformist Bloc: 6.45%, 144 532 votes
The voters' preferential vote made changes to the ballots of BSP and the Reformist Bloc.
The preferential vote of the supporters of the former sends the candidate, listed under number 15 – Momchil Nekov at the first place. The preferential vote of the Reformist Bloc sends to European Parliament Svetoslav Malinov, who was listed at second place in the ballot.
According to the final official results, the GERB MEPs are Tomislav Donchev, Andrei Kovachev, Maria Gabriel, Vladimir Uruchev, Eva Paunova and Emil Radev.
The four BSP candidates who got the most votes are Momchil Nekov, Sergei Stanishev, Iliana Yotova and Georgi Pirinski.
The DPS's seats are for Filiz Hyusmenova, Delyan Peevski, Nedzhmi Ali and Ilhan Kucuk.
BWC sends Nikolai Barekov and Angel Dzhambazki and the Reformist Bloc – Svetoslav Malinov.
Earlier Stanishev said he would not take his seat in the European Parliament, but at this point it is yet unclear who would take his place – the CEC will publish the lists within two days.
On election night Peevski said he would relinquish his seat to Iskra Mihailova – current Minister of Environment and Waters.
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.
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