SOFIA (Bulgaria), November 7 (SeeNews) – The three proposed changes to Bulgaria's voting system were supported by an overwhelming majority in Sunday's national referendum, according to partial results from the central election commission.
The referendum was held in parallel with the first round of the presidential elections
With 85.64% of the votes in the referendum counted, 71.96% of the voters had supported the proposal to elect the members of parliament through a majoritarian voting system with absolute majority in two rounds, while 16.22% said “no”, figures posted on the website of the commission showed on Monday.
The introduction of compulsory voting in elections and referenda in Bulgaria received the support of 61.84% of the voters, while 26.22% opposed it.
The last question asked the voters whether the state subsidy for political parties and coalitions should be cut to 1 lev ($0.57/0.510 euro) per valid vote. This question received the highest support of the three, with 72.41% voting “for”, and just 15.05% saying “no”.
With 85.64% of the votes counted, around 2.9 million people had cast ballots in the referendum. This means parliament is now obliged to discuss the three questions posed by the referendum, as the 20% voter activity requirement set by law has been surpassed.
However, for the outcome of the referendum to be legally binding, the total number of votes should be higher than the number of votes in the last parliamentary elections held in 2014, which means a bit over 3.5 million.
($ = 0.9033 euro)