April 6, 2021
In the run-up to the 2022 midterms in the United States, it is important to watch elections overseas to see how foreign influence operations might be evolving and how other countries are responding. As we saw prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, for example, Russia tested out some of its nefarious tactics in other countries before utilizing them here. So it’s worth paying attention when other countries go to the polls.
This past Sunday, Bulgaria held parliamentary elections in the wake of large anti-government protests that began in July of last year in response to a number of issues, including corruption.
These elections marked the first parliamentary contests where voting machines were fully deployed across the country. Because of the introduction of these new machines, the Bulgarian Central Election Commission put in place an education campaign designed to instruct voters on how to use them, with the goal of giving its citizens confidence in the system.
Bulgarian voters could choose to use either the machine or a paper ballot. As we know well in the U.S., the kind of technology used to cast ballots is a key subject in debates about election system security. On the one hand, electronic machines can present concerns including the possible lack of a paper trail, software glitches, and the potential to be hacked. On the other hand, there is a history in many countries of tampering with paper ballots, ballot box stuffing, and/or ballots disappearing, and there are also concerns about poor ballot design and user error, which we saw in Florida’s 2000 ballots.
The results from Sunday’s elections are not yet finalized, and we have not seen documented reports of foreign interference at this time. But we do have data indicating that Bulgarians are more worried than most about both external and internal threats to their elections. A survey conducted in 2018 by the European Commission — a Special Eurobarometer on democracy and elections in European Union countries — found that:
- 61 percent of Bulgarians who responded were concerned about elections being manipulated through cyberattacks.
- Bulgaria was among the countries most concerned about voters being influenced by third parties, with its respondents ranking third in the EU at 63 percent.
- Bulgarian citizens were the fourth most concerned about the possibility of foreign actors and criminal groups covertly influencing elections, at 65 percent.
- Latvia (75%), Spain (74%), and Bulgaria and Lithuania (both 72%) had the highest proportions concerned about the final result of an election being manipulated.
- Bulgaria had the highest proportion of respondents concerned about votes being bought or sold, at 81 percent.
- Bulgaria again had the highest proportion of respondents concerned about people being coerced to vote in a particular way, at 72 percent.
There is some recent history that could be contributing to this level of skepticism. In 2017, there were reports that both Russia and Turkey had tried to influence Bulgarian elections in favor of their respective preferred political parties.
Our hope is that the Bulgarian contests last weekend were fair and free from foreign influence, although it is clear that its citizens are worried about the security and validity of their votes. It would present yet another challenge if merely the threat of foreign interference or domestic corruption led to fewer people voting or to reduced trust in the system — a way for bad actors to scare citizens off of the democratic process without actually undertaking concrete actions. As we get final turnout numbers from Bulgaria and look forward to other upcoming elections across the globe, this is certainly a trend to watch.
Marie Harf
International Elections Analyst, USC Election Cybersecurity Initiative
Marie Harf is a strategist who has focused her career on promoting American foreign policy to domestic audiences. She has held senior positions at the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency, worked on political campaigns for President Barack Obama and Congressman Seth Moulton, and served as a cable news commentator. Marie has also been an Instructor at the University of Pennsylvania and a Fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service.