I had a question from one of the students in my politics class at Acadia University a couple of weeks ago, as we discussed the fundamentals of the Canadian and US electoral systems. It went something like:
“So, depending where you lived, you could be voting for something/someone in an election, like, every year or something? Really??”
It was a bit of naive-incredulousness that the basic civic or civil duty of voting wasn’t only an occasional thing - something you’d do way less frequently than you’d change the tires on your car or, for that matter, less frequently than you’d buy new sets of tires for the car after you’d worn the old ones down.
Here we were cloistered in a university classroom, at a small liberal arts university, in an idyllic town adjacent to Canada’s newest wine region, with a class full of folks who’d only recent become legally old enough to vote for the first time themselves.
As I reflected on that while driving home, I was brought in mind of the village of Slivnitsa, Bulgaria. On October 2, 2022, I spent election night there as a member of an International Election Observation Mission (IEOM) - something I’ve been fortunate to also do in Ukraine, Tunisia and Jordan over the years.
This polling station was in an abandoned and disused factory - once the largest refrigerator manufacturer in Southern Europe. Now, it was being pressed back into service as a polling station for ~600 local residents of the village of Slivnitsa, situated about 45 minutes drive from the capital, Sofia.
The young woman in charge of this polling station had a family connection to the factory - her grandfather used to be a senior manager there, in its heyday. Now, this twenty-something was overseeing the conduct of a “free and fair” election in this locale.
Not only was the factory abandoned and disused, the working conditions were pretty spare.
There was a port-a-potty installed in the parking lot outside, for when nature called. There was no electricity, but someone had jury-rigged a few bulbs hanging over the registration tables. The local police official stationed outside was wearing his “border patrol” vest (the town is not far from the Serbian border), and we presumed he was keen on the overtime pay a long Election Day shift would net him.
In many Eastern European and former soviet-bloc countries, the police are involved in supporting the conduct of elections through protection of the ballot box and voting precinct; this is common in Ukraine, for example. This can give rise to concern in places where they are either used as enforcers or tools of the state, or government in power. There was no evidence that was the case here.
While the conditions of this particular station were far-from-ideal, the observations we made there were of a well-run process. The e-voting machine used performed as it was supposed to. And the pride each of the election workers took in running an efficient process during this stage was clear to my European Short-term Observer (STO) partner and I.
We’d both monitored elections in a number of countries before, and were generally quite impressed with how things went.
We’d spent the previous 14 hours or so meandering throughout the some rural and remote mountain villages, isolated towns in the farming regions, and in various small-and-medium sized towns surrounding Sofia, observing the conduct of voting; now we were monitoring the count, with the support of our local translator, and driver.
The differences between each locale that day were stark - but the sentiment was similar: of anomie from the political process, resigned-ness to the idea that ‘nothing will change’, and a feeling of being the worst-off in Europe.
In one village we stopped at in the morning, we saw little voting take place: “People will vote around lunch, or when they wake up. No one has jobs here.”
As we left that particular polling station, a woman approached us and spoke with my STO colleague in her native German. She implored her to “…speak with the Bulgarian government and make Europe see and force the government here to increase the single parent payment.” The payment, she said, was 20 euros per child, while rent cost 300, and power and lights another 200.
We observed at polling stations in suburban towns where the standard of living was higher, and people commuted for higher-paying work in the Capital.
Drive a little further, however - about the same distance from Sofia City Centre, as the crow flies - and life couldn’t have been more different. It felt like we were virtually in the middle of nowhere, the poverty obvious and subsistence-living the only kind of life available. The road was single track, full of wash-outs and potholes, and the only corner store had long-since closed.
Deep in a mountain valley we stopped at a polling station that used to serve as the local train station, and contained an Alpinist’s museum - paying homage to the area’s mountain heritage and (only) local attraction.
Up into the mountains on an epic switchback, we stopped in a polling station that normally served as the community centre, local dance hall, event centre and general all-purpose locale. We were regaled with the history of the famous cultural icons who had made their way to the village over the years, and who were memorialized on the walls in (mostly) black and white.
Those photos ane memories were decades in the past - giving new meaning to ‘glory days’.
We ended the day observing the count in Slivnitsa, at the Fridge factory.
Many Elections in Eastern Europe, and former Soviet countries, share a few post-vote-count stages not found in Canadian elections.
There are the local organizations/polling places called the Precinct Electoral Centre (PEC), and then regional bodies known as the District Electoral Commission (DEC), and finally a national body often called the Central Electoral Commission (CEC).
After the count and procedures at the PEC are completed, a number of designated officials normally make their way to the DEC for confirmation of their count results. If they have everything in order, depending how far away it is, they could be back home by 2 or 3 am.
If they get to the DEC and have forgotten a stage, failed to get the requisite signatures on the vote protocol, or there is a discrepancy with the e-voting machine receipts and counterfoils…they could be forced return and re-do things back at the PEC. In some cases, it can be quite a process, and the DEC itself can be a chaotic and disorganized place.
Not this time, or in my experience in Sofia in October 2022.
The chaos came after the election returns, when politics came into full view.
Fast-forward six months, and these PEC and DECs are being pressed into service again for elections this Sunday, April 2nd.
With the failure of the Socialist party in Bulgaria to cobble together a coalition government - the last of the major parties to get their shot to form a coalition, each of which failed in succession - the country is now facing its fifth parliamentary election in the last 2 years.
If polls hold, the outcome points toward a similarly-split result in this election.
An increased use of paper ballots, thought to favour some of the older-line parties, will feature in this election.
International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) President and CEO Tony Banbury gathered with election management bodies from around the world for discussions in New Delhi recently, and worried-over misinformation and the mis-use of technology in elections.
Speaking to the Indian Express, Banbury said the “single gravest threat to democracy” is the information space, urging social media companies to implement voluntary guidelines during elections.
During briefings for the OSCE Election Observation mission last Fall, we heard about the increasing use of propaganda and disinformation, spread primarily through social media like Facebook.
On the doorstep - and in the sphere of influence of - Russia this is even more of an issue for Bulgarians.
This is a country betwixt and between — politically, socially, culturally.
For Bulgarians, the poorest EU and NATO member, the impacts of migration are everywhere.
Just prior to the pandemic, and the war in Ukraine, the country was receiving significant migrant in-flow from Turkey, Russia and Ukraine, in that order, as a matter of course. The bulk of its migrants, however, were not for labour, family or educational reasons, but for “other” = asylum-seekers made up more than 55% of migrants to the country in 2019-20.
It also recorded large in-bound migrant populations from Syria, although that began to ebb as the civil war there drags on, and more recently Afghanistan - a population which was much in evidence last fall. It was rare that I saw less than 40-50 people in line outside the Interior Ministry building, no matter what time of day I passed.
The desperation to leave places like Afghanistan is leading people to continue taking the kinds of risks that Matthieu Aikins chronicled is his amazing book, The Naked Don’t Fear the Water.
Six weeks ago, a journey by truck smuggling 52 migrants across the border - reported to be from Afghanistan - ended in tragedy. The migrants were hidden underneath piles of wood, and 18 people died en route, making the worst tragedy in illegal migration to the country to date.
The strongest contrast of the line-ups of people outside the government buildings was the nearby vehicle ‘bling’.
A row of sleek Range Rovers, Discovery’s and other shiny new cars, many of them with stickers reading “provided with support of the EU Internal Security Fund”.
Traveling around Sofia province, it wasn’t uncommon to see three or four different ‘kinds’ of police, with different colour uniforms, cars and decals: migration police, border police, and regular old police.
There is a preponderance of street art in Sofia, a lot of it acting as social and political commentary.
The artist Er’Naste Nasimo had an exhibit running in Sofia when we were stationed there for the elections, focused on the power of illusion - and delusion.
The caption beside one of the exhibit’s paintings — the one with the woman in a green dress at the right of the gallery above — read: “The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” Daniel J. Boorstin
As I looked at his works, it brought to mind many of the people I’d met that week who seemed to be tied to illusions - ones likely reinforced through disinformation and propaganda originating outside the country:
Of the very bad life they have;
Of how good others - anyone outside Bulgaria - has it;
Of the futility of politics; and,
Of the corruption they see/feel/believe is all around them.
The normalization of inconclusive elections, a dysfunctional Parliament, and the rising threat of misinformation during those many elections - abetted by Russian influence campaigns and aggression - could begin to rot the core of Bulgaria’s democracy.
I don't agree that "comparison is the thief of joy", though it can be. Comparison is a major source of information and inspiration - unless of course it's comparison with perfection, when it is discouraging. Comparing Canada's politics with Bulgaria's - as I confess I was while reading - shows the value of what we have and have to maintain. So, one hopes, it brings resolution. Thanks for the post. It was fascinating.