„The court has established partial illegality of the elections, which led to a change in the political and personal composition of the parliament, therefore we have a proven problem with the freedom and fairness of the elections“.
This was said in an interview for the program „120 minutes“ Yanaki Stoilov, constitutional judge, rapporteur on the case on the legality of the elections for the 51st National Assembly.
„In order for the vote to be fair, votes cast for one party should not be transferred to another, votes should not be fabricated – "the votes cast correspond to the actual will of the voter," the constitutional judge specified.
The Constitutional Court issued a decision on the case on March 13 and declared the election of 16 MPs illegal. This is the largest partial annulment of a parliamentary vote so far.
As a result of this decision, the Central Election Commission (CEC) announced that with 107 votes the party "Velichie" crosses the threshold of parliament and will have 10 of its MPs.
With that, there will be fewer MPs from other parliamentary groups. There are also shifts within the parliamentary groups themselves – six will leave and new deputies will come in their place.
The subject of the Constitutional Court's inspection were the ballot papers of 2,204 polling stations, which represents 17.06% of the total 12,920 polling stations in the elections on October 27, 2024.
The experts checked the ballot papers of 1,768 polling stations and found that in 46.75% of the stations there was a change in the number of actual votes.