Presidential vote: 613 polling stations abroad – twice as many as before in the US
More than 39,000 Bulgarians abroad have applied to vote on Sunday. Volunteers in Chicago expect queues because of new rules.
Symbolic image · Photo: Alicia Fagerving / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped and resized)
For Sunday's presidential election, 613 polling stations will open abroad in 60 countries, BNT reported. More than 39,000 applications were submitted from 73 countries. 266 voting machines are planned for voting abroad. The United Kingdom has the most polling stations, followed by Turkey and Germany.
More than 2,700 Bulgarians have applied to vote in the United States, where there will be 44 polling stations this time. “Now the polling stations have doubled from 20 to 40,” said Daniel Dzhenev, the election coordinator in Chicago. He said he could not tell whether twice as many people would come.
Volunteers in Chicago expect difficulties in staffing the polling station commissions. They also anticipate queues because of new rules on voters' declarations. In total, around 6.59 million Bulgarians are eligible to vote.