Election day tally: 242 reports, 23 broken machines and empty polling stations abroad

By the end of election day, the Interior Ministry had received 242 reports of violations and opened six pre-trial proceedings, Novinite reported. More than 17,000 officers guarded polling stations. Interior Minister Ivan Demerdzhiev said the vote had proceeded calmly, without the usual practices of vote-buying and manipulation. By 3 p.m., 165 of 217 reports concerned vote-buying, according to the ministry; 1,277 warnings were issued and no one was detained. On the eve of the vote, in the village of Damyanovo near Sevlievo, a 37-year-old man struck a police officer guarding a polling station; he was detained, and voting was not disrupted.

Of a total of 11,622 voting machines, 23 had broken down by 4 p.m., and the affected polling stations switched to paper ballots, election commission spokeswoman Stoyanka Balova said. There were also seven cases in which voters refused to vote by machine.

Abroad, interest was weak despite a network expanded to 613 polling stations. In Turkey, where the number of stations had tripled to 78, 31 people had voted at the Avcılar station in Istanbul by 10:30 a.m. – compared with 1,400 there over the whole day in April. Bulgarians abroad cited remote addresses and a new requirement to fill in declarations in front of the commission.