"Monitoring of Local Elections and Referendum 2015"

01-08-2015

The main goal of the current project proposal is to support democratic, transparent and elections; achieving preventive effect on the possibility of violating democracy during the elections and increasing citizens’ participation in the electoral process.

The observation of the Parliamentary elections 2014 showed that, even after the enactment of the new electoral code, the imperfections of the electoral process and the electoral campaign are getting deeper. 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.

Based on the experience of the monitoring of the elections in 2014 and the two new components of observations that we introduced – the analyse of regional media and monitoring of the platforms and the programs of the main political parties, we consider it extremely important to develop on  the upcoming local 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.

The work of ISI during the monitoring of the last elections that took place in Bulgaria showed 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.