Compulsory voting

Bulgaria will hold on Sunday a national referendum on the voting system, election rules, and state subsidies handed out to political parties.

The national poll will coincide with the presidential elections, whose first and second round are scheduled for November 06 and November 13, respectively.

Here is all you need to know in brief.

While most Bulgarians support the upcoming referendum on changing the political system, which will be held alongside presidential elections on November 6, polling data suggest a high degree of confusion over what people are being asked to endorse.

Two weeks before the end of the pre-election campaign, every second person interviewed (51%) has stated that they are not familiar with a single campaign act of the candidates for head of state, showed a nationally representative survey of Alfa Research.

The Balkan Refugees Culture and Solidarity Foundation (Bal-Goc) in Turkey has called on Bulgarian citizens in the country to vote for head of state on November 6, while calling the restriction for only up to 35 voting sections to be opened discriminatory.

Bulgarian talkshow host Slavi Trifonov has filed the documents of an initiative committee that will lead the campaign for his referendum on the politial system.

Registration started earlier in September as Bulgaria braces for a 2-in-1 vote, with presidential elections and the referendum due on November 06.

The Bulgarian cabinet has approved the budget for this year's presidential elections and a referendum on the country's political system on October 06.

Funding for both polls will be secured from the central budget for 2016.

The governing coalition of Bulgaria must prepare for a challenge to the recent introduction of compulsory voting from the Constitutional Court, Parliament Speaker Tsetska Tsacheva said on Tuesday.

Bulgaria on Thursday introduced mandatory voting for its citizens, France's AFP agency is reporting.

According to this, the motive behind the decision is the Bulgarian government's hope to boost low election turnout "and battle rampant vote-buying in one of the European Union's most corrupt countries."

The Bulgarian parliament approved on Thursday the introduction of compulsory voting after it adopted the first of the proposed set of amendments to the Electoral Code.

The introduction of compulsory voting had been approved by the parliamentary legal affairs committee earlier on Wednesday.

The Bulgarian legal affairs parliamentary committee adopted at third extraordinary sitting on Tuesday amendments to the Electoral Code which foresee the introduction of compulsory voting.

According to the proposed amendments, voting will become a duty of citizens, with those voting eligible to rewards, while those not casting their ballot will be subject to penalties.