The first round of the local elections for mayors and municipal councilors on both the local and provincial level in Bulgaria were held on 27 October 2019. The second round of the election took place on 3 November, as per the decree signed by the President of Bulgaria. 6,227,901 Bulgarians were included on the voter lists and were eligible to vote, a 136,000 voter reduction compared to the 2015 local elections.
Following the final results, the results on the provincial level showed that the ruling GERB party had lost 6 mayorships in comparison to the previous election. The Socialist Party gained four, the Bulgaria for Citizens movement gained one, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms kept their previous result by obtaining one each, and two independent candidates were elected.
Electoral system The elections to Bulgaria's municipal councils are conducted via proportional representation with an open list preferential voting system.
The mayoral elections take place within the context of a majoritarian two-round system. The first round of the elections was held on 27 October. If no candidate in a given constituency managed to gain 50% of the vote, a runoff election was held for that constituency in the second round on 3 November.
Voting is officially mandatory, but in practice there is no punishment for failing to vote and the law itself isn't strictly enforced.
Voters further have the option to vote against all proposed candidates.
A recent change in Bulgaria's electoral code made it mandatory for all candidates in the local elections to have had a permanent address registration within their respective constituency for at least 6 months prior to the election in order to be permitted to stand for election in that constituency.
Machine voting did not take place, as this type of voting was removed from Bulgaria's electoral code in July, under the pretext that it would be "too complicated" for voters to vote in local elections using machines.
Bulgarian law imposes strong restrictions on campaign agitation. Each piece of electoral propaganda must clearly show the candidate which it represents and must contain the phrase "the buying and selling of votes is a crime". The use of Bulgaria's flag or coat of arms on election materials is strictly forbidden. Religious symbols, as well as symbols representing foreign countries or regions are also banned. All campaign materials must be issued in the Bulgarian language only. No agitation is permitted on 26 October, the day before the election. Candidates may also only present their platforms before the media after concluding a written contract. Agitation within public transport, as well as all state or local institutions, as well as corporations with over 50% state ownership are banned.
Voting takes place between 7:00 and 20:00, which can be extended to 21:00, if by 20:00 there are still people waiting in line to vote. After the votes are collected, they are transported by the Bulgarian police to Arena Armeets, where they are subsequently verified and counted.
Electoral campaign The electoral season officially began on 27 September. A total of 59 political parties, 7 coalitions and numerous independents announced their intention to field a total of 12,000 mayoral candidates and 36,000 candidates for members of the municipal councils.
All of Bulgaria's political parties spent a total sum of 1,3 million Bulgarian lev in the electoral campaign in the run-up to the elections. VMRO spent the largest amount of money on the campaign, totaling nearly 300,000 lev. The Movement for Rights and Freedoms came second in terms of spending with over 145,000 lev spent, while the Bulgarian Socialist Party came in third with around 140,000 lev.
The Mayors of Montana and Gotse Delchev set the record for longest mayoral terms, with both of them standing for election for the seventh consecutive term.
Funding changes A few months before the election, Bulgaria's National Assembly accepted a government bill, which cut public party subsidies from 11 down to just 1 lev per vote. The bill also permitted unlimited donations to political parties by private individuals or corporations for the first time in Bulgaria's history. The change was criticised by Bulgaria's opposition as a "hit by a bat" from the government in time for the local elections.
Mayorship of Sofia The election for the position of Mayor of Sofia, Bulgaria's capital and largest city, was expected to be hotly contested in particular. Twenty people announced their intention to run for that position, including incumbent mayor Yordanka Fandakova from the ruling GERB party, former Ombudsman and parliamentary deputy head Maya Manolova, VMRO deputy chairman Angel Dzhambazki, and Volen Siderov, the leader of the ATAKA party, who resigned from his seat in the National Assembly in order to announce his candidacy.
Fandakova based her campaign around continuing the work she had begun during her previous tenures. Manolova's campaign revolved around fixing the aftermath of various scandals surrounding municipal renovations that had happened during Fandakova's previous term, digitalization of municipal services and ensuring kindergarten access for all young children in the city. Dzhambazki focused his campaign on dismantling ghettos inhabited primarily by Bulgaria's romani minority, as well as banning the annual Sofia Pride gay parade as part of what he described as a 'law and order' campaign.
The election was expected to be a very tight race between Fandakova, who had run the city for three consecutive mandates and Manolova, who is one of the only two Bulgarian politicians with an approval rating of above 50%. Dzhambazki was expected to come in third.
The election was also noteworthy for the fact that it breaks the typical electoral mould. Sofia is traditionally known as a stronghold of centre-right and right-wing politics and is usually considered a very safe election for the ruling GERB party, yet Maya Manolova, who hails from the leftist Socialist Party, was predicted to be one of the top two candidates. If elected, she would have become the first left-wing Mayor of Sofia since the end of the socialist period.
A pre-election study found it necessary for a candidate to receive around 6000-7000 votes in order to be elected into Sofia's municipal assembly.
Conduct
First round The first round of the election took place on October 27. The electoral commission ordered the seizure of all preference vote ballots in the town of Pleven due to what it deemed a "technical error".
The ruling GERB party's campaign announced that it would ask Bulgaria's electoral authorities to punish television broadcaster BTV for airing footage which GERB deemed to have negatively affected their electoral result during the voting day. BTV stated that they would refuse to comment before they receive a copy of the complaint.
VMRO complained of what they deemed to be "vote buying, voter intimidation and harassment". VMRO's candidate in Plovdiv decried what he deemed to be "monsterous" electoral manipulation and stated that he would refer the matter to Bulgarian public prosecution.
Maya Manolova's campaign raised concerns over what they deemed to be "organized vote buying" in favour of Fandakova in three of Sofia's districts, pointing to large discrepancies between the candidates in several electoral sections, in which Fandakova has 10 times more votes than all other candidates combined, despite polling at around 30% in opinion polls and not being native to those districts. Manolova later alleged that the "entire Bulgarian underground was mobilized" to engage in widespread electoral fraud in favour of her opponent Yordanka Fandakova from the ruling GERB party. Fandakova denied the allegations and stated that it would be impossible for her to win the Sofia election via vote buying.
Three cases of major fraud were investigated in the town of Byala Slatina, in which undefined figures broke the secrecy of the ballot by observing which candidates voters were casting their ballot for. In addition, hundreds of voters voted in special mobile voting booths using allegedly fake medical documents. Some of these voters admitted that they were illiterate, that they had no real medical documents and that the voting booth officials "helped them secretly" to make a decision on whom to vote for. An illegally unsealed ballot box was also allegedly found to have been used during the voting process in the town.
Due to long waiting times during the counting of the ballots, the central electoral commission provided government-funded Sorry! board games, playing cards, plasma TVs which play Bulgarian movies and various other tabletop games in an attempt to please the counters of the electoral vote. The commission also separated the entry points to the counting arena, in order to attempt to avoid a repeat of the 2015 elections, in which the counting authorities were locked in without food for over 3 days and wrote SOS messages on Arena Armeec's windows in what was described as analogous to a "hostage crisis". Despite these measures, two civilian counters and one policeman fell unconscious during the counting process.
Numerous errors were discovered during the ballot verification process. Bulgaria's electoral authorities refused to specify the amount of the errors.
ATAKA's Volen Siderov arrived at the ballot counting premises and insisted to be allowed in. He was denied entry by the policemen guarding the area and left by midnight after a long argument with the authorities, which stated that Bulgarian electoral law makes no provision for election candidates to observe the counting process.
The independent mayor of Nesebar, who was running for a new term, was arrested the day before the election and held in detention throughout the first round election. Several socialist party councillors were also arrested alongside him by police. Despite this, he managed to win the election while still under arrest by defeating GERB's candidate for the position. A local court later ordered that he continue to be held in detention, which rendered the newly re-elected mayor unable to attend the oath-taking ceremony at the local council, thus raising legal questions as to whether or not he would be eligible to take up the position for another mandate. The arrestees were accused by prosecutors of taking part in a vote buying ring, an allegation dubbed "hilarious" by the mayor's attorney, which stated that the prosecution had only summoned a single witness, which allegedly rambled on stories with an "unexpected" ending. The arrests came after a request by State Prosecutor Sotir Tsatsarov to the Central Electoral Commission for the removal of the legal immunity of the mayor, the socialist party councillors, as well as several candidates from the "21 Movement", was granted by the commission. The chairman of Nesebar's Municipal Assembly, himself hailing from the socialist party, stated that he believed the only explanation for these arrests were a "political order" as part of a "war" to seize power in the town.
Despite these events, Bulgaria's electoral authorities stated that the first round of the vote had taken place successfully "without major incidents".
Aftermath