SEC officials in Vinica admitted in their official report that fraud was committed. Namely, during the count they noticed votes were missing, serial numbers did not match, and as they point out “every 87th ballot of the official ballots issued by the SEC was missing“.
This leads to only one conclusion, there was vote-rigging, the so called “Bulgarian train”.
Bulgarian train is, in fact, a method of vote-buying that includes a recurrent process of casting pre-filled ballots. The process starts when political ‘handlers’ distribute pre-filled ballots in front of polling stations. The voters who are willing to sell their ballots take them into the polling stations, where they obtain empty ones, and cast their pre-filled. Then, they go back outside and hand the empty ballots to the handlers.
In Macedonia’s case the Bulgarian train is much simpler. Pre-filled ballots are simply brought in black bags and dumped into ballot boxes while the empty ones are removed. People (voters) aren’t needed. It’s for this reason, the SDSM and DUI refused to allow party representatives (as is the norm) be present at polling stations.
This is believed to have happened in at least 64 polling stations across Macedonia where the desperate Government tried to increase the voter turnout in a Referendum widely boycotted by the public.
The opposition parties have pressed charges against 200 SEC officials, policemen and voting observers for purposefully ignoring obvious fraud.
