Amendments to the Electoral Code

As the seventieth day of #DANSwithme approaches, many observers and especially opponents of the protests are increasingly raising the topic of the demands, goals and proposals of those who came out to oppose the government. It can be said that this question is to some extent justified - from a protest of a political nature, one should expect a commitment to a certain thesis.

At this stage, however, mainly due to the heterogeneous composition of the protesters and the de facto lack of leaders, the DANS members are united only around the demand for the resignation of the cabinet and the introduction of amendments to the Electoral Code. The present text will focus on the latter and will attempt to outline possible directions for reforms in the area.

In essence, the demands for changes to the Electoral Code represent a change in the basic principles of statehood – along with the Constitution and tax legislation, the electoral model determines the functioning and democratic nature of a political system. Electoral legislation forms the representative bodies of power, which in turn carry out the majority of the decision-making process in state power. Obviously, the current model is not working – on the one hand, there is widespread apathy, and on the other, the protests demonstrate the presence of a large number of people who believe that the current government does not represent them. For this reason, the introduction of such amendments is necessary, and in the direction of expanding the political freedom of individual voters in determining political representation. In this sense, the amendments should include:

1) Elimination of the redistribution of votes in a national constituency. According to the current system, after the primary distribution of votes in the individual multi-mandate constituencies, the mandates received by the different parties are “harmonized” at the national level, with a frequent transfer of mandates from one constituency to another. The real result of this mechanism is that the votes cast for a particular party list in a given constituency actually support the election of another list of the same party in another constituency. Thus, on the one hand, the party principle of forming representation effectively replaces the personal principle (which confirms the right of parties to send “whoever they want” to parliament), and on the other, the vote of specific voters is replaced. The elimination of these problems can be achieved by eliminating the aggregation of votes at the national level, i.e. parliamentary representation is formed entirely from the lists submitted at the local level. Separately, such an amendment would shift the focus from party-level programs to the individuals promoted by specific parties to the top of the lists and their individual approach to the election campaign in individual districts.

2) Introducing the possibility of free ranking of lists of parliamentary candidates. Insofar as the introduction of a purely majoritarian principle of voting in Bulgaria would lead to significant distortions and, above all, total domination of the largest parties and blocking the representation of various minority interests, then at least at this stage of development of the Bulgarian democratic system, such a decision would not be justified. On the other hand, the main element of majoritarianism – the election of specific individuals, not party platforms, could be achieved by introducing the so-called “Irish model” of voting[1]. In this case, parties do not rank their candidates in lists, but only propose a certain set of persons who are running for a seat in parliament. On election day, voters rank the lists themselves, and are not limited to the candidates of a particular party, but have a choice between all candidates.

This ranking method emphasizes the preliminary definition of the parties' future coalition policy - i.e. in order to achieve stable and coherent voting by their voters, parties should explain in advance which individuals from their party are ready to work with specific individuals from other parties on the spectrum, and accordingly bear direct responsibility to their voters in the event that this does not happen within the framework of parliament (in the Bulgarian context, this avoids incredible coalitions such as the, to put it mildly, strange collaboration between DPS and Ataka, which, I assume, the voters of both parties are not happy with). In addition, here the personal campaign of the candidates again comes to the fore and their direct responsibility to their voters is facilitated; separately, there is the possibility that a strong candidate who does not enjoy great approval in his own party may come to the fore.

3) Changing the principle of passive preparation of electoral rolls to active. Radical reformers are talking about introducing educational or property qualifications for voting. And although reversing the principle of “No representation without taxation”[2] sounds fair, universal suffrage is nowadays perceived as a fundamental principle of democratic states, and a change of this caliber also requires amendments to the Constitution. However, it is not impossible to change the method of generating electoral rolls – currently they are based on the so-called passive principle, in other words, the electoral rolls include all persons with a permanent address in a given region.

However, this allows the entry of a large number of “dead souls”, which greatly distort the election results, and also creates serious administrative obstacles for people who do not live at their permanent address (students, seasonal workers, etc.). The solution to these problems lies in the introduction of active preparation of the lists - in other words, everyone who wishes to vote is registered in advance in the section in which they wish to vote. Thus, only those who declare their desire to participate in determining the country's governance cast their vote, and the entry of fictitious persons into the electoral lists becomes extremely difficult (due to the relatively well-functioning database of the GRAO, the registration mechanism will also be easy). Buying votes will also be significantly complicated, because it will now require a preliminary administrative procedure, and not just a small gift and organization within the framework of the election day itself.

4) Lowering the electoral threshold. After the last elections, many parties (especially those remaining outside the parliament) talked about lowering or completely eliminating the threshold for participation in parliament. Indeed, the current parliament was formed with the votes of 2.68 million people, which leaves more than 2/3 of Bulgarians without parliamentary representation (regardless of whether we are talking about those who did not vote or voted for parties remaining below the threshold). For the complete abolition of the threshold to make sense, a much larger parliament is needed, in which those who received a small part of the vote could also participate. And as much as this is impractical, a reasonable reform in this direction would lower the threshold to 2% or 1% of the vote.

Such a change would, on the one hand, lead to a much more accurate representation of citizens' political preferences, without actually changing the electoral process or the relations between parties and the state (given the fact that, according to the current law, subsidies are received by parties that have transferred 1% of the votes), and would also increase the chances of small and situational parties to present their views in parliament without needing the significant resources in the form of solid voters and money for election campaigns that the large parties have. In addition, the abolition of the national electoral district, described in 1), eliminates the need for a legally established threshold, because the electoral procedure in each of the individual districts sets a unique threshold for the district equal to the number of actual votes cast, divided by the number of mandates in the district.

5) Introduction of electronic voting. This measure will have a rather cosmetic effect on representation. As studies in the field indicate, the introduction of electronic voting does not significantly stimulate voter turnout[3], but it does represent a significant convenience for those who vote. Separately, it will significantly facilitate the work of the election administration, as it eliminates both the complications caused by the regular overloading of polling stations and those caused by the counting of physical ballots.

6) A few more ideas that don't need explanation:

- Observers from civil society organizations are the guarantor of the transparency and fairness of the electoral process. In this sense, they should be provided with access to all stages of the elections and the procedure for submitting signals directly to the judicial authorities should be facilitated;

- Currently, the nomination of independent candidates is highly difficult due to the high threshold for registration (the minimum of 7,000 signatures represents a serious challenge in some regions); for this mechanism to actually work, they should be lowered;

- The media environment in election campaigns is traditionally filled with chaos and ambiguity. For this reason, it is necessary that paid election advertising, whether in the form of talk shows or videos, be marked as such in order to avoid disinformation by "independent" media;

- Again, for the purpose of transparency and informed choice, the sources of funds for financing the election campaign should be declared when registering political parties. In the current model of crony capitalism, the affiliation of political parties with various business interests is a public secret, but when it comes to representative bodies, it is preferable that its parameters – at least to a certain extent – are known to the voters.

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