A recent amendment to Bulgaria’s electoral system has resulted in increased voting restrictions for Bulgarians living abroad, who can now only cast their ballots in diplomatic missions. Drawing on data from the Electoral Integrity Project, Andrea Fumarola and Nikolay Marinov assess what the new rules may mean for the country’s democracy

Fumarola, Andrea

Marinov, Nikolay

LSE Research Online

5/3/2016Bulgaria’s new voting reforms risk undermining the country’selectoral processblogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2016/05/03/limiting-the-vote-from-abroad-erodes-bulgarias-democracy-evidence-from-the-electoral-integrity-project/A recent amendment to Bulgaria’s electoral system has resulted in increased voting restrictions forBulgarians living abroad, who can now only cast their ballots in diplomatic missions. Drawing ondata from the Electoral Integrity Project, Andrea Fumarola and Nikolay Marinov assess what thenew rules may mean for the country’s democracy.The Bulgarian National Assembly has recently held an extraordinary sitting to adopt amendments tothe Election Code. These changes, proposed by the right-wing party Patriotic Front, were passedwith a 139 to 35 vote with eight abstentions. Some of the most relevant provisions include theintroduction of compulsory voting rules and restrictions concerning the possibility for citizens abroadto vote outside Bulgarian diplomatic missions, thereby banning or limiting the use of other locationsas polling stations. Bulgarians living abroad have expressed their anger at this reform, organisingprotests all around Europe, and arguing that the amendments will deny millions of citizens abroadfrom their right to vote.The integrity of the electoral process: some evidenceSince its independence in 1989, Bulgaria has had a good reputation for conducting free and fair elections, asreported by specialised agencies such as Freedom House and Polity IV. However, new evidence has been gatheredby the Electoral Integrity Project. The 2015 annual report compares the risks of ﬂawed and failed elections, and howfar countries around the world meet international standards. The report gathers assessments from over 2,000experts to evaluate the perceived integrity of all 180 national parliamentary and presidential contests held between 1July 2012 to 31 December 2015 in 139 countries worldwide, including 54 national elections held last year. Fortyexperts are asked to assess each election, using 49 questions, with an average response rate of 30%. The overall100-point Perceptions of Electoral Integrity (PEI) index is constructed by compiling the responses.The PEI score obtained by Bulgaria corresponds to the average of the evaluation of its performance in the 2013 and2014 legislative elections, when the centre-right party, GERB (Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria) ledby the former Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, needed a second early election to ﬁnd a majority in the NationalAssembly. GERB won 84 seats out of 240 (32.7%), not enough to avoid the formation of a coalition (minority)government with two newborn parties, the centre-right Reformist Bloc and the centre-left party Alternative forBulgarian Revival, plus the outside support of the Patriotic Front.Figure 1: Perceptions of electoral integrity in the European Union (2012-2015)1/6Note: Scores on the PEI 100-point index by country (2012-2015). Source: Elaboration fromPEI 4.0 (N=25); Norris, Martinez i Coma, Nai, Grömping (2016)Figure 1 above shows variations in electoral integrity across the EU. While there is a general positive pattern acrosscountries – in particular for the northern European and several central and eastern European (CEE) democracies –three former Communist countries, Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania, occupy the bottom of the ranking with amoderate perception (PEI = 50-59) of electoral integrity. Most strikingly, Bulgaria not only scores the second lowestrate in the PEI Index among the twenty-ﬁve EU member States included in the sample, but also performs poorly incomparison with the other CEE countries.What are the weakest stages in Bulgarian elections? Figure 2 shows the low score registered by the country hasbeen mostly due to three indicators: registration procedures; coverage of the electoral campaign by the mass media;candidates and parties’ access to private and public funding.Figure 2: Bulgaria’s performance in Perception of Electoral Integrity sub-indexes2/6Source: Elaboration from PEI 4.0 (N=25); Norris, Martinez i Coma, Nai, Grömping (2016)A critical point: voter registrationAccording to the Electoral Integrity Project’s report, in the 2013 elections Bulgaria scored one of the worstperformances in the world for registration, with a voter registration index of 31/100 (“very low”). This was onlypartially improved in the following election in October 2014. On this occasion, the elections were rated “high” (PEIIndex = 60) while voter registration performed relatively poorly again, scoring just 49/100 (“low”). This implies that,even if Bulgaria approved a new electoral code in spring 2014, several limits persist with regard to the country’sregistration procedures.The electoral register for national elections (legislative, presidential and national referendums) is managed by theMinistry of Regional Development and local administrations and is prepared on the basis of registered permanentaddresses. All Bulgarian citizens with civil registration are automatically included on the national electoral register,excepting those who have lost their rights for mental disabilities or criminal oﬀences (Electoral Code, article 3).However, both of these provisions are openly in contrast with OSCE/ODIHR recommendations and internationalstandards – a situation which has been repeatedly highlighted by international electoral observers. Restrictions onvoting rights for prisoners, in fact, are assigned without regard to the crime committed. Along with this point,restrictions regarding persons with mental disabilities should be removed or, even in this case, be decided on acase-by-case basis.Until the recent reform, voters abroad could vote in the country of their residence, submitting a request to beincluded on the electoral list of a polling station abroad, or be permitted to go directly to the polling station in theircountry of residence on election day. However, this system of registration had some exposure to potential fraud.Voters abroad could be included in voter lists and the only mechanism to prevent multiple voting was a self-declaration that they had not voted a second time. For these reasons, the media often talk of ‘electoral tourism’ torefer to documented cases of buses of voters – in particular those residing in Turkey – coming to Bulgaria to casttheir vote on election day. The Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS), supported mainly by Bulgarian Turks andMuslims, has been often accused of bringing Bulgarian citizens living in Turkey to vote in the elections, despite thesigniﬁcant number of polling stations operating in Turkey itself. According to the media, this procedure allowedcitizens to vote both in Turkey and in Bulgaria.3/6ConclusionThe provision concerning restrictions on Bulgarians voting abroad was main objection motivating a numberof protests in several European cities. Since 1990, Bulgaria is merely one of forty-one European countries – andtoday one among twenty-ﬁve EU member States – to provide external voting to its expats.Figure 3: Voting rights for EU citizens living abroadNote: Experts’ perceptions of voting rights for expats citizens. Source: Elaboration from PEI4.0 (N=24); Norris, Martinez i Coma, Nai, Grömping (2016)Guaranteeing the right to vote for citizens living abroad represents a dimension of electoral integrity in whichBulgaria has performed relatively well, even better than half of the other EU member states. Experts have rated thecountry’s provisions for external voting as more than satisfactory on a scale from one to ﬁve, in particular because ofthe possibility for this category of citizens to vote not only in diplomatic missions but also in several polling stations,as foreseen by article 14 of the Electoral Code passed in 2014.The recent reform approved by the Borisov government, however, risks undermining this aspect. Political forces infavour of the restrictive provision justiﬁed the decision on the basis that there is a need to limit forms of electoralmalpractice – in particular vote buying – that appear to deeply aﬀect Bulgaria’s democracy. However, data gatheredby the Electoral Integrity Project and the V-Dem Institute show some interesting evidence which may contradict thisassumption.Figure 4: Ease of external voting and incidence of vote buying4/6Source: Elaboration from PEI 4.0 and V-Dem Data 6.1 (N=24)As shown in Figure 4, there is a positive correlation between ease of voting abroad and the absence of vote buying.Correlation does not equal causation, however this indicates that higher levels of electoral participation from abroadcorrespond to lower levels of vote buying during elections. This would appear to contradict the reasons driving thegovernment’s reform. Indeed, it could even risk undermining the integrity of the electoral process, which had slightlyimproved in the previous elections held in 2014. And ultimately the consequences of this process couldextend beyond the electoral context, aﬀecting the overall legitimacy of the Bulgarian political system.Please read our comments policy before commenting .Note: This article gives the views of the authors, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, norof the London School of Economics. Featured image: voters ﬁlling in their ballot papers in front of the Bulgarianembassy in London, October 2014. Credits: Tena Prelec / EUROPP. Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/23jlJ3O _________________________________About the authors5/6Andrea Fumarola – LUISS ‘Guido Carli’ University and University of SydneyAndrea Fumarola is a doctoral researcher at LUISS ‘Guido Carli’ – University of Rome, and aVisiting Research Fellow with the Electoral Integrity Project, University of Sydney. Nikolay Marinov – University of Mannheim and University of SydneyNikolay Marinov is Professor of Political Science at the University of Mannheim, and holds a visitingposition at the University of Sydney, working on the Electoral Integrity Project.6/6

Bulgaria’s new voting reforms risk undermining the country’s electoral process

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