Bulgarian electoral code referendum

A petition was introduced into the Bulgarian Parliament on 10 March by an Initiative Committee presided by professor Georgi Bliznashki on proposed changes to the electoral code of Bulgaria. These include: reintroducing first-past-the-post voting alongside proportional representation, making voting compulsory and introducing electronic voting. Under current Bulgarian law, a referendum is mandatory if a petition receives at least five hundred thousand signatures. Supporters say they have 560,000 signatures for the petition. Parliament was given three months (until early June) to authenticate the signatures. Numerous signatures were nullified, however, and so the requirement of half a million authentic signatures was missed. Still, there were enough signatures to put the content up for debate before parliament. When the debate came in June, however, lawmakers rejected the idea of holding the referendum.

One of the elements in the petition, that of introducing mandatory voting, has been put forward by the leader of the Bulgarian Socialist Party, Sergei Stanishev, and has been endorsed by the leader of GERB, Boyko Borisov.

With an election likely for the summer, should GERB, who won the recent 2014 European parliament elections in Bulgaria, win, it is possible that this referendum will be held at a later date. Rather than be a referendum by popular initiative, it would become a government-sponsored initiative.

References

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