Bulgarian Socialist Party to ask court to nullify Shoumen mayoral election
The Bulgarian Socialist Party in Shoumen is to lodge an application in the Administrative Court for the nullification of the second round of the mayoral elections in the city, which official results show its candidate as having lost by 77 votes.
According to the Central Election Commission, on November 3, GERB candidate Lyubomir Hristov got 48.57 per cent of the vote (12 538 votes) and the BSP’s Ventsislav Venkov 48.27 per cent (12 461 votes).
A total of 3.15 per cent (814 people) voted “I don’t support anyone” in the second-round mayoral election in Shoumen.
Bulgarian National Radio reported BSP Shoumen leader Vesselin Penchev as saying on November 6 that the party was taking the election to court because of numerous violations of election law, the incorrect reporting of votes by the section election commissions, as well as suspected vote-buying.
“Valid ballots for our candidate were counted as invalid and vice versa – invalid ballots were reported as valid for the other candidate,” he said.
Penchev said that the BSP did not believe that the vote tallies were correct and would seek a manual count of the ballots.
He said that the Prosecutor’s Office had declined to take up the BSP’s complaints on the day of the run-off vote, with the office saying that there was insufficient evidence.
“It is not our job to collect evidence, we have suspicions that need to be checked,” Penchev said.