Parliament's standing Committee on Legal Affairs passed again changes to the Election Code. The Committee members deliberated President Rumen Radev's December 14 decree to return for further discussion provisions of the law on amendments and supplements to the Election Code, adopted by the National Assembly on December 2.
Radev's veto will be examined in the plenary after 12 MPs voted in favour of the adopted amendments to the electoral legislation, 11 voted against, and nobody abstained.
In early December, Parliament adopted amendments to the Election Code, restoring voters' right to choose whether to use a paper ballot or a machine ballot. Part of the adopted changes was to have the ballots from the machine voting counted by the election commissions together with the paper ballots.
According to Milen Mateev of Continue the Change, the unprovoked change of electoral rules destroys the public's trust in the electoral process. Nadezhda Yordanova of Democratic Bulgaria also spoke in support of the President's veto.
Aleksandar Nikolov of Bulgarian Rise said that his parliamentary group supports the President's veto. Nikolov warned that the current version of the Election Code puts the secrecy of the vote at risk.
Branimir Balachev of GERB-UDF said, "We will not support the veto, because we believe that this code is made to help the Bulgarian people, to increase voter turnout and to make elections actually fair".
/RY/
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