Bulgaria’s parliament has approved at first reading a series of amendments to the Election Code that would bring back widespread machine voting, remove the planned electoral district for Bulgarians abroad, and lift restrictions on the number of polling stations in countries outside the European Union.
Lawmakers considered six separate bills submitted by parliamentary groups, approving four of them while rejecting two. The adopted proposals will now be combined into a single draft during further discussions in the parliamentary legal committee.
One of the approved bills, submitted by Progressive Bulgaria, restores machine voting under rules similar to those used in 2021. Under the proposal, paper ballots would remain only in settlements with fewer than 300 residents. The bill also abolishes the separate electoral district for voters abroad and removes the limit of 20 polling stations in non-EU countries.
The proposal also requires software used in the voting process to undergo audits by the Ministry of Innovation and Digital Transformation together with the Ministry of Interior under a jointly approved methodology. Progressive Bulgaria also proposes counting all printed voting receipts and introducing a ban on publishing election-day polling data from sociological agencies on social media.
