Bulgarian Expats Threaten Worldwide Protests over Voting Hurdles

Bulgarians abroad are threatening to stage protest rallies at Bulgarian diplomatic representations all over the world over the approach of the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry regarding their voting rights.

A number of Bulgarian expats, organized in different initiatives, such as We Want to Vote, Public Councils of Bulgarians Abroad and the Facebook group Voting without Borders are accusing the Ministry of hurdling on purpose voting abroad.

The submission of online applications for voter registration outside the country was allowed for the first time this year under the condition they are filled in Cyrillic and through the use of a special electronic form.

Some of the grounds stated by Bulgarian Embassies and Consulates for the rejection of a large number of applications are the latter not being in PDF format, being filled by hand, or that some of the names of the applicants are written in the Latin. None of these, however, is required by law, as the diaspora counters.

In addition, the Foreign Ministry and the Ambassadors failed to adhere to the October 4 deadline to publish the list of names of those who have applied to vote abroad and began doing so only on Friday.

Ambassadors also had a deadline of August 13 to ask local governments and authorities for a permit to open voting polls in the respective country. The issue of having such permit for the Serbian towns of Dimitrovgrad and Bosilegrad, and the Canadian city of Montreal, where Bulgaria does not have diplomatic representation, is still pending, despite assurances of the Ministry the permits will be issued.

All the hurdles connected to accepting their applications and the opening of voting polls are seen by Bulgarian expats as violation of their voting rights. A number of those who wish to vote, for example, will have to travel a long distance to do so.

Bulgarians abroad have the right to vote on October 23 to elect the country's new president.

According to the Election Code, 20 applications are needed in order to open a voting poll in a country where Bulgaria has a Consular Office or diplomatic representation, while where there is no such representation, the number of required applications is 100.

There will be voting polls in 146 cities in a total of 48 countries. Their number had been determined after the 37 606 applications from Bulgarians abroad, wishing to take part in the vote, have been processed. The deadline to submit the applications was Tuesday, September 27.

Turkey, traditionally, leads the list by number of voting polls – 46, followed by Spain – 23, the US – 14 and Moldova – 7.

The full list of voting polls abroad, in Bulgarian, can be found HERE.

Last week, the members of the initiative of Bulgarians abroad "We Want to Vote" sent a letter to the Foreign Affairs Ministry, protesting against the organization of the election process in Germany.

The letter was sent after the Central Electoral Commission, CEK, and the Ministry refused to open election polls on October 23 in the German cities of Hamburg, Darmstadt, and Magdeburg, where Bulgaria has honorary consuls and consulates.

The authors of the letter point out the website of the Bulgarian Embassy in Berlin, had posted for weeks information that 20 applications for voter registration are needed in order to open voting polls in these three cities. There are 63 applications for Hamburg, 34 for Darmstadt and 28 for Magdeburg.

According the Foreign Ministry, there must be 100 such applications.

The expats insist that the Embassy in Berlin had further announced that there will be voting polls in 6 German cities, including the above 3, if 20 applications are received under article 44 of the Election code. They have sent a link to the Embassy's website where this information could be seen. Meanwhile, the website has published new information – a copy and paste of Election Code texts.

"In this case, the Foreign Ministry must assume responsibility about the information circulated by the Embassy in Germany and fulfill the promise made to Bulgarians there to open polls in these three cities," request the expats and the Initiative.

On Tuesday, the spokesperson of the Foreign Affairs Ministry, Vesela Cherneva, voiced surprise from the unusually low number of applications from the Bulgarian diaspora in Germany, but explained that honorary consulates do not have the statute of official diplomatic representations thus the 100 application rule applies to the three cities as it has been for the general elections in 2009.

On September 27, the members of the same initiative sent a letter to Prime Minister, Boyko Borisov, and to over 100 Bulgarian Ambassadors to alert them about hurdles and refusals to open election polls abroad. According to the letter, there were a number of cases when diplomatic missions have refused the applications or have argued about their validity.

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