New Pell-Mell with Voters’ Data Posted by Bulgaria’s Central Electoral Commission

Bulgaria’s Central Electoral Commission (CEC) explained the 100,000 voters from the lists in the capital Sofia that disappeared between the first and second rounds of the local elections with making a “technical error”.

This happened after Bivol posted on Facebook remarks on the CEC officially announced voter data in Sofia and the northwestern city of Pleven. Unlike Sofia, where over 100,000 voters had disappeared, 20,000 new voters had appeared in the lists for the second round in Pleven.

After the correction of the “technical error”, the difference in Sofia between the first and second rounds ended up being only 67 people. There are now 1,064,705 people in the first list and 1,064,772 in the second list, according to the CEC.

Corrections were also made in the Pleven lists, where in the first round there had been 115,324 voters in the lists, and for the second round, they are down by 20 people.

The data had been an estimation, how about the ballots?

It became clear from the muddled explanations of the CEC that the voters’ data had been submitted as an “estimate” by the regional governors, but the Municipal Electoral Commission (EC) data were the relevant ones.
In order to comply with the State’s “estimate” about the number of eligible voters, the government must provide every one of them with the opportunity to vote and print the appropriate number of ballots.

The question is what happened with the 100,000 printed ballots for Sofia for the first round of the elections that turned out to be unneeded.

The CEC has not yet released open data for the local elections. Previous research by Bivol in connection with the European Parliament elections data earlier this year showed that machine voting and preferences had not been reported in many places.

In order to tackle the problem, the CEC made a “Stalin-like” decision and canceled the machine voting for the local elections – “no machine voting, no problem”.

However, even without the much hated by the CEC and the political parties machine voting, the problems persist.
It turns out that if the data from the voting polls protocols, published by the CEC, are added, the data on the number of people with voting rights are completely different than those announced.

According to the above addition, 1,057,270 voters could vote in the first round or 7,435 less than announced, and in the second round, the number is 1,062,823 voters or 1,949 less than announced. There is a difference of about 1,000 people in Pleven as well, as in other regional cities where there were run-offs.

In addition, there are as many as 674 voting polls in Sofia with a difference in the number of voters between the first and second rounds. In 50 voting polls, the difference is more than 10 voters. In 25 voting polls, the difference is more than 100 voters between the two rounds.

There are also shocking differences and discrepancies between the announced by the CEC data and the protocol from the MEC for the election of municipal councilors in the southern city of Stara Zagora. IT expert Petko Petkov signaled this on Facebook. According to the CEC, 58,931 people had voted, and according to MEC – 58,609.

The MEC numbers for the voters in the primary and secondary lists also do not add up. It is mindboggling how the sum of 133,727 voters in the main list and 21 in the additional list has ended up being 135,412.

The following table shows the data for Sofia extracted from the voting polls protocols of the votes for the mayor of the municipality. To make the table illustrative, only the data for polls with a difference of five or more voters is published. The CEC owes answers to whether these are again “technical errors” and how they can be so massive and systematic.

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Атанас Чобанов

Специализиран в журналистика на данните и фанансови разследвания. Член на борда на OCCRP от 2016 до 2018 г. Global Shining Lights Award за 2017 и 2019 г.

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