“Preterm parliamentary elections 2017. Civil observation”

The main goal of the current project proposal is to support for democratic, transparent and fair elections of Preterm parliamentary elections; achieving preventive effect on the possibility of violating democracy during the elections, and increasing citizens’ participation in the electoral process. Our experience from the monitoring of Presidential elections and of this before its and based on the feedback from our partnership organisations and media show that civil observations has key role for obstruction of election violations.

The observation of the Presidential elections 2016 showed that, even after the enactment of the new Electoral code in the end of May, the imperfections of the electoral process and the electoral campaign are getting deeper. After a few months one of the amendments proved problematic when reporting the results. And the Electoral code was changed in the election campaign, a few days before the Election day.

Which requires continue of the observation over how the instruments of fulfilling the new normative reglement are being created and implemented. The possible way to do this is by following the activity of the Central electoral commission, and by participating in it's belonging consulting organs. When the elections pass, we will  prepare a new analyse and new propositions for changing the electoral legislation in partnership with other organisations observers. This is what we did after the European elections, but because of the short period the Parliament was working, these propositions were not discussed.

Based on the experience of the monitoring of Presidential elections 2016 and the two components of observations that we introduced – the analyse of national media and monitoring of the platforms and the programs of the main political parties, we consider it extremely important to develop on  the upcoming preterm elections exactly this last component. In the conditions of a total apathy and passivity of  bulgarian voter, of emerging new formations in the electoral  process, and at the same time – politically instable public institutions and public authorities, it is really important to observe and analyse the messages that are being sent to the voters in order to win their trust. For this purpose it is necessary to have an Internet platform that helps the process and making it as public and transparent as possible, so that is serves for a corrective in the electoral campaign. In order to access the messages sent by the parties and coalitions for the elections, we will use again the method of media monitoring. In addition, we will examine also the political platforms of the candidates.

Based on the achievements of the monitoring in 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 ISI aims at close monitoring of the campaigning and the electoral process, including the Election Day. The possible violations of the electoral process must be given the necessary publicity and they should be reported to the responsible authorities and institutions. In view of the short time to the elections, this aim will be achieved by already established network from civil observers which can be held coordination workshops.

Problems to be solved:

The work of ISI during the monitoring of the last elections that took place in Bulgaria proved that our organisation is a preferred partner in the electoral process. Members of our team have been invited as participants and analysts in media discussions and emissions. The alerts of infractions in the elections that we were sending to the responsible institutions in the electoral day helped to prevent new ones.

Also, by the network of civil observers, we increase the citizen's participation in the electoral process and the voter's interest in conducting fair, transparent and democratic elections.

Less people are searching for a significance in the electoral platforms and vote by emotions or refuse to vote. This is why it is so important to put the accent on the political massages in an understandable for the mass voter way.

At the same time we will have the opportunity to observe the conduct of the medias in the electoral process and their mediatory role in leading the message to the voters.