Slavi Trifonov proposes to clear the voter lists of so-called called “dead souls”. With the lists cleared, voter turnout would be “much higher, and then anyone who thinks they can buy votes will go to the political dump”.
According to the declaration prepared by ITN, the clearing of electoral rolls of “dead souls” will eliminate: “bought and corporate vote”, “non-compliance with the election rules, with the recommendations of the CEC, neglecting the video surveillance; the writing, destruction and falsification of protocols and bulletins”. A panacea at all, notes Ivan Bakalov in a comment for E-vestnik.
Will it happen?
First, what are “dead souls” in voter lists?
The lists include all Bulgarians with social security number over 18 years old, by address registration. Last, they are 6.6 million. – more than the population in Bulgaria, equal to minors.
The ESGRAON system, created in the early 1970s under the Social Security Administration, registers every Bulgarian with an EGN over 18 in electoral rolls, regardless of where they are. But about 2 million of these Bulgarians are emigrants or temporarily working abroad.
Some have lived abroad for 10, 20 or 30 years or more. They are the owners of homes in Bulgaria, they have not registered their Bulgarian address. Many of them do not plan to return, but they have a Bulgarian passport, they have a personal identification number and they are invariably present in electoral lists at their home address in Bulgaria. They are removed from the local lists only if they have explicitly registered by residence abroad. Most don't. Something more – in elections in the States, for example, or elsewhere, appear on election day before the sectional commission and it registers them against an identity card. They only need to sign a declaration that they have not voted and will not vote elsewhere. So they appear in two lists, one there, another at the home address in Bulgaria.
Thus, Bulgarians who vote, for example, in Great Britain, are also present in lists in Bulgaria. In the early 1990s, those appearing on two lists were called “phantom voters”. Now – “dead souls”. There are also such – some have died. They live for 30 years abroad and die there. No death certificate reaches Bulgaria and they do not delete him from the list. In our municipalities, their home address is registered as a voter, over 18 years old. (Bel. author - – for example, in my old neighborhood in Sofia, we found out with neighbors that our neighbor, who has been living in Sweden for over 30 years, died a few years ago, but appears on the electoral rolls several times already). There are also those who died in our country who, for some obscure administrative reasons, were not deleted from the lists.
„Dead Souls“ are less of a problem than the “double living“ who are present in electoral lists both abroad and in Bulgaria. It's good that out of the many thousand Bulgarian population in Chicago, for example, only a few thousand vote. Otherwise, the voter lists will increase by at least 100,000. people, because they can fit in on the election day to vote there, and at the same time they are present in electoral lists in Bulgaria.
Legislators tried to solve this issue with t. called active registration. They introduced compulsory voting in 2015. The penalty for not voting was to drop off the electoral roll after two consecutive non-votes. The Constitutional Court saw in this violation of the constitution, the right to vote was taken away. Again demagoguery, because it is not taken away – you can go on election day with an ID card for address registration and you will be entered on the list. The possibility to clear the lists has been blocked once by the Constitutional Court and there is little chance of it happening again. Thus, the mandatory voting remained on the books, and the voter lists continue to be filled.
Since then, the column “I do not support anyone” – to enable a voter to account for himself in compulsory voting, even though he does not like any party. But “I don’t support anyone” is equal to an invalid vote, it counts for nothing but turnout.
So – what election violation can eliminate the clearing of the lists of “dead souls”, as Slavi Trifonov imagines?
– Buying votes, already tired of people with no solution. No clearing of voter lists can help, people who are not “dead souls” are selling their votes. The system was worked with only a paper ballot. That's why Borisov constantly creates distrust in machine voting – “they touch the machines”. And ITN joined an action against machine voting, at their request they canceled it completely in the previous elections.
– Convert valid submitted ballots to invalid – it is enough to scratch one more jaw on a regular bulletin. Mass practice of sectional election commissions in small settlements (and not only), where locals negotiate and make a commission of their own people, and municipalities and regional committees prevent representatives of some parties from including them in sectional commissions. A valid ballot cannot be invalidated by machine voting – you can't scribble on the receipt from the machine.
– One voter votes on behalf of 10-20, appears with their identity cards before the commission of its people and it registers them as regular voters. Usually in Roma neighborhoods. ID cards are provided by the holders for a fee.
– Filling in blank ballot papers for a particular party and dropping them into the ballot box – it is done after the end of the election day, during the counting. Since there has been video surveillance, such cases of filling in blank ballots and preferences have been seen.
– Entering listed valid ballots for a minor party as votes for another party, in another column. There are such cases even in Sofia – young voters vote for the first time, for example for the “Greens”. Then they see in the protocol of the section that not a single vote for the “Greens” has been entered. And for example, in these elections, dozens of votes for “Greatness” are entered in adjacent columns for other parties.
– Voting in Bulgaria on behalf of voters abroad – as in some neighborhood, village, it is known who is abroad, they vote for him in the committee and sign him. No one checks signatures on voter lists.
– Corporate vote and under pressure. The local agricultural etc. municipal services, RZI, RIOPS, etc. pressure local shops, companies, agricultural producers with 10-20 workers, etc., to provide votes for GERB, because it depends on them to issue permits, sanctions for violations, etc. Thus, the party state GERB, which has appointed everywhere its own people, secures addict votes. Peevski's DPS-New Beginning did the same in the last elections, where the local government is in their hands.
By clearing the voter lists of “dead souls”, as Slavi Trifonov wants, one of the many perversions with the elections can be limited only partially. The proposal is in practice a lie and demagoguery that diverts attention from the real solutions.