The intermediate results from the president elections and the national referendum supervision of TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL – Bulgaria indicate deficits within the instruction work process of the election committees.
On 6 November 2016 TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL – Bulgaria – the Bulgarian national chapter of the international anti-corruption organization TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL – performed supervision of the first tour of the president elections and the national referendum. The initiative is carried out as a response of the public expectations for an independent civil monitoring of the election process and represents the organizational aim to help increasing transparency and integrity within the political life in the country.
The monitoring of the election process was implemented with the cooperation of more than 100 supervisors in the whole country and in partnership with 26 civil organizations. TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL – Bulgaria received signals for election process violations at the hot telephone: 0800 11 224, supported by АLAC (Advocacy and Legal Advice Centre).
The preliminary results from the supervision of the first tour of the president elections and national referendum demonstrate a tendency for increase of organizational irregularities at the election process. Within the elections day 173 signals were received and registered, while the share of the organizational irregularities amounted to 76,88 % of all the irregularities reported. The share of the irregularities connected to unlawful canvassing and publicity at the election day is high – 12,14%. A substantial share have the violations connected to pressure upon the voters and the vote control – 9,83%. The share of signals for votes purchase equals to 1,16%.
The comparison analysis of the intermediate data indicates that the domineering problems at the election process in 2016 rise from the low work level of the section electoral committees and from the political parties attempts to influence the voters’ choice.
The reasons for the high share of the organizational irregularities are not to be excused only with: combination of elections and referendum in one and the same day; low work level of the electoral committees; violation of the procedures for dealing with voting-papers and for entering the voting lists.
Despite the fact that in comparison with past elections the relative share of the vote control and vote purchase mark relative decrease (respectively 13,13% and 2,53%), these problems keep making strong compromising impact over the election process.
TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL – Bulgaria will perform supervision of the second tour of the president elections as well. Based on the monitoring results we will duly inform the Bulgarian society, the institutions and the international monitoring organizations. The final monitoring report shall be published in due time corresponding to the international standards.
Sofia, 7 November 2016
TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL – BULGARIA