On October 25, together with the local government elections, the people in Bulgaria will be asked one question - whether to introduce remote electronic voting. The referendum as an expression of direct democracy is rarely used in Bulgaria. The first national referendum was held in 1922, the fifth one will be in 2015. Obviously the political parties in Bulgaria have no need of direct democracy. But we, ourselves, need participation in order to begin to see that practices and policies can change in this way.

This referendum will be "a referendum for the referendums". It will determine whether Bulgaria will have direct democracy in the coming years, says political scientist Georgi Metodiev: "We should not forget that if the referendum is invalid, it will be the second failed referendum organized in the modern history of Bulgaria. It will be very easy for politicians to say afterwards that citizens are not mature enough for such a form of direct democracy."

"It is an entirely different matter whether public opinion on referendums in Bulgaria is the same as in Western democracies", says political scientist Stoycho Stoychev."On the other hand, we need to consider the legal and organizational conditions for holding such consultations. The fact that Parliament has put a high threshold for recognizing the results of the referendum as valid shows there is no real attitude among politicians to listen to the voice of the people."

If remote electronic voting is introduced, it will benefit most of our compatriots abroad, young people, people with disabilities, and those who travel a lot. Regarding the technology for online voting, the Bulgarian model for electronic referendum is to be soon completed. The project is implemented with the support of the Bulgarian-Swiss Cooperation Programme. One of the authors of the project, Lyubomir Blagoev, explains that this technology dramatically reduces the chances of manipulation. As for the secrecy of the vote, the team has introduced the so-called "unique anonymous identifier."

"Electronic voting is a function of society first and of the development of e-government second”, says Nikolay Nedyalkov - founder of the Association of Software Developers. “I had the pleasure to talk with one of the creators of electronic voting. He said that in their case it was important to build trust in people to communicate electronically with the state."

Whether voting with a paper ballot or electronically, we Bulgarians tend to be suspicious that our vote will most likely be misused. And this did not start yesterday. In 1895, prominent writer Aleko Konstantinov wrote an emblematic essay entitled Extinguish the candles. He was triggered by the founder of the People's Party, Konstantin Stoilov, twice prime minister of Bulgaria. As his opponent Dragan Tsankov was about to win the elections, Stoilov sent a telegram to the Byala Slatina polling station: "As a last resort, if necessary, put down the candles and fix the polls."

In recent decades we have witnessed election frauds, controlled and corporate vote, negative election campaigning, broken promises in the programs of political parties. There is a growing conviction among citizens that actually nothing depends on their vote. How, then, could we believe that we have the potential to make important decisions about our political future together? As a society, we have a task - to establish patterns of interaction, of public partnership, of active civil action together. This will not happen with the transfer of power from one political party to another as most of them have become depersonalized and encapsulated. This can only happen through engaged citizenship. Whether we will allow these processes to take center stage in Bulgaria’s political life is the political choice that we hold in our own hands.

English Rossitsa Petcova