Presidential Election Runoff: Voter Turnout as at 11:00 a.m. is 6.11%

The Central Election Commission (CEC) held a briefing to provide the latest information on voter turnout in the presidential election across the country.

Bulgaria Elects its Seventh President

“Voter turnout across the country as at 11:00 stands at 6.11%, with 405,270 voters having cast their ballots,” CEC spokesperson Stoyanka Balova said.

As in the first round, voter turnout is lowest in Kardzhali—3.56%—and highest in Vidin—8.7%.

In comparison, voter turnout at the same point in the first round was 5.8%.

"So far, the CEC has received 16 reports, most of which concern violations of voting secrecy and campaign activity on social media on election day."

As of 12:00, machine voting had been suspended in 14 polling stations. Of these, 11 had switched to paper ballots, while three continued using machines because they had two machines each.

“These are polling stations located in the regions of Blagoevgrad, Burgas, Dobrich, Kardzhali, Pazardzhik, Plovdiv Region, Silistra, Sofia Region, Targovishte, Shumen and Yambol. In Kostinbrod Municipality in Sofia Region, we have received a report that the entire municipality is without electricity. Work is under way to arrange generators, and additional batteries have been sent, so machine voting continues in full without any problems. The reasons for the machine failures are that some machines failed to start on election day, while in others the card reader did not work. There have also been isolated cases of a machine’s screen or printer breaking down. In one case, the screen could not be used, and there has been one printer failure on a machine in the entire country.”