site.btaUPDATED Nearly 200,000 Bulgarians Cast Votes Abroad, 53,000 Voted by Machine, Says Foreign Minister Neynsky

Just under 200,000 Bulgarian citizens voted abroad, of whom 53,000 voted by machine, caretaker Foreign Minister Nadezhda Neynsky told a briefing on Monday following Bulgaria's early parliamentary elections on April 19.

Of those 200,000 voters, 156,000, or 81%, had no advance registration and filed applications to vote on Election Day, which slowed the process, Neynsky explained. Ballot counting in the westernmost voting sections in the United States is continuing. 

The Foreign Minister said that in Turkiye, voting continued past the end of Election Day in seven sections due to queues of people waiting to vote. In the United Kingdom, five voting sections in London had extended working hours. Voting continued after 8 pm in one section in Spain and Norway each, and in two in Serbia, the Foreign Minister said.

She recalled that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs implements the Electoral Code as adopted by the National Assembly, including the restrictions to 20 polling stations in countries outside the European Union and outside diplomatic and consular missions.

Minister Neynsky listed the organizational and technical measures taken by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to guarantee the possibility of voting, placing first the instructions to the diplomatic and consular missions for intensive and maximally broad consultations with representatives of the Bulgarian communities abroad and with the volunteer organizations willing to assist in the conduct of the elections. On this basis, the optimal distribution of the twenty sections was determined, taking into account the number of applications and their distribution and the number of voters in the past elections.

Neynsky said that diplomatic and consular representatives have proposed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to support the opening of the maximum number of sections in countries, in diplomatic and consular missions, with the only restrictions being due to the limitations of the respective buildings.

Diplomatic and consular representatives have also proposed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Neynsky reported, the increase in the maximum number of members of the sectional election commissions - up to nine people. Applications for voting in electronic form from Bulgarians abroad, who were in places where a polling station was subsequently not opened, were submitted on the instructions of the Central Election Commission (CEC) to the polling stations designated for voting in order to speed up the registration of voters in the station. Neynsky informed that all polling stations abroad have submitted their protocols to the CEC and they have been accepted with the exception of one station in London, where technical problems are being resolved.

Ivan Naydenov, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in response to a question about the voting in London that with regard to the organization of the elections abroad, every effort had been made to determine the optimal location of the polling stations in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This was done in dialogue with the Bulgarians living there, said Naydenov. However, he pointed out that the Electoral Code is explicit that the election day can be extended by only one hour, which was done in one station in London, leaving Bulgarian citizens who were unable to vote.