Today Bulgarians are going to the polls to vote in the presidential elections. It's been a busy political season in Bulgaria and as a foreigner it's been difficult for me to follow all of the political he-said-she-said.

I know that I should care but I haven't felt invested in any of this political posturing. It just seems impossibly hard to keep up with. (Yes, I realize what a lame excuse that is.)

What I have been interested in are two cultural phenomena related to the elections.irst, the various accusations of vote buying and second, the prohibition of alcohol sales on election day. <!--more-->

The Sofia Echo wrote an interesting piece on this practice "<a href="http://sofiaecho.com/2011/09/23/1161478_the-vote-buying-business" target="_blank">The Vote-Buying Business</a>" and detailed a couple of "busts" made by the media.
<blockquote>A hidden-camera story by bTV on September 16, showing brokers offering votes for sale in an impoverished Roma quarter in Plovdiv, led to three arrests the following day. In a whimsical touch, the television station bought votes – being careful to film the money being handed over – for a fictitious political party that just happened to have the initials BTV.

The report showed how a list of names, complete with Bulgarian identity numbers (EGN), was handed over. On camera, officials confirmed that the people on the list, whose EGNs were blurred on screen to conceal their identities, actually existed.

The three men arrested were in their 30s and 40s. The previous convictions of one include vote-selling, for which he had a 10-month suspended sentence. The other two had previous convictions for fraud.</blockquote>
I think it's fascinating that the media seems to be taking a lead on these exposes/busts. Sure it makes for good tv but it also seems to suggest that many other institutions are turning a blind eye to the problem that is until they are forced to look and act.

Of course this is not a practice I support but it's pretty clear to me why it happens. If you can really get 100 leva (or maybe as much as 200 leva) for your vote and you're making something like 450 leva a month why wouldn't you consider it? Economically, it seems to make sense to the bottom line. I am just thankful I am not in a situation where this is something I'd need to think about.

The other interesting thing is the fact that alcohol is not for sale today and for some reason, everyone seems to feel the need to remind foreigners of this.  My school even sent an email reminder to everyone about the restriction. God forbid I'm not allowed to buy alcohol one (or maybe two) days a year.

The prohibition of alcohol is a little harder for me to get my head around. We don't do this this in the States. I suspect that the rational behind this prohibition also has to do with vote-buying but this time is the fear of plying people with alcohol in order to get them to vote they way you want. Still, in a country battling serious voter-fraud/vote-buying banning the sale of alcohol seems more like show than anything else.

On this note, if you're Bulgarian and you can't buy alcohol today you might as well get out there and vote because you <em>can</em> do this today!!