Voting abroad: three times as many polling stations in Turkey, but fewer requests
Bulgarians abroad have far more polling stations than in April: 78 in Turkey and 82 in Britain. A new rule requiring voters to fill in declarations at the polling station is causing concern.
Archive image · Photo: Sdrawkcab / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped and resized)
Bulgarians abroad have significantly more polling stations available in the presidential election than in April's parliamentary election. In Turkey there are 78, three times as many as then, public broadcaster BNT reported. The number of requests to vote, however, fell by around 15%, from more than 15,000 in April to just under 13,200. In Istanbul, 22 polling stations were prepared and sealed, only five of them with voting machines. Consul General Vasil Valchev welcomed the scrapping of the cap on the number of polling stations.
In Britain, the number of polling stations rose from 28 in April to 82, according to BNT, 24 of them in London; machine voting is used in 27. In total, there are 613 polling stations in 60 countries, according to the Foreign Ministry, 242 of which use machine voting, for the first time also in Warsaw, Bucharest, Bratislava, Budapest and Helsinki.
The biggest hurdle is seen as a change to the electoral law: voters must now fill in their declaration in front of the commission at the polling station. A commission chair in Istanbul therefore expects problems and lines. Presidential elections traditionally draw fewer voters abroad than parliamentary ones; in 2021, around 90,000 people voted in Turkey in the first round.