Bulgaria had parliamentary elections this month, and one of just 20 polling sites for Bulgarians living in the United States was right here on Cape Cod. More specifically, it was in the Hyannis Margaritaville.
That's according to Jack Styler of the Provincetown Independent.
CAI's Gilda Geist spoke with Jack recently to learn more.
Gilda Geist Can you give us an overview of the recent election in Bulgaria (and then we'll get to the Cape Cod stuff later)?
Jack Styler Yes, absolutely. So, on April 19, Bulgaria held its eighth parliamentary election in just five years. And in those five years, there has really been controversy after controversy in Bulgaria and a cascading political crisis that has really sent the country into a bit of a tailspin where Bulgarians say [the country] largely cannot be governed because no ruling coalition in parliament is able to stay together to term. So, on April 19, Bulgarians went to the polls again to try to vote for a new parliament. But this time, the former president, whose name is Rumen Radev, entered parliamentary politics and created a new party called Progressive Bulgaria that he hoped, and in the end was successful in really doing what no one had done in many years in Bulgaria, which is winning enough support from the parliamentary elections to have a majority of the seats in parliament without having to create a coalition with other parties.
GG Can you tell us a little bit about the Bulgarian immigrant community on Cape Cod?
JS Cape Cod has a very large Bulgarian population. There's no exact numbers on how many Bulgarians live on Cape Cods but I think it's telling that this year, after a law was passed in Bulgaria that set a cap on the number of polling stations in foreign countries outside of the European Union to 20, Hyannis was one of the 20 spots in the entire country that was chosen as a polling station for Bulgarians living abroad [in the United States]. So, on April 19, 174 Bulgarians from across the Cape and Islands showed up, actually at the Margaritaville in Hyannis, to go to a conference room where they voted in parliamentary elections.
GG Why was there a polling site for Bulgarians in the Hyannis Margaritaville of all places?
JS Right, right. You'd think that that would probably be not the most likely polling place, but I spoke to the leader of the polling station, Teodora Varbanova, and she told me that in the past, the Bulgarian election was held at the St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Barnstable, but a scheduling conflict meant that they needed to find a new site this year. And after calling quite a few other churches and trying a few real estate agencies, Varbanova said that she was able to contact a manager at the Margaritaville Resort Cape Cod in Hyannis, and that they let her, for $350 per day, hold the Bulgarian parliamentary elections there.
GG How did Cape Cod Bulgarians vote and how did those results compare to how Bulgarians in Bulgaria voted?
JS Well, it's interesting because on Cape Cod, of 174 voters, 80 of them—so about 46 percent—voted for the former president, Rumen Radev's party, Progressive Bulgaria, which was pretty similar to how the rest of the country voted in Bulgaria. The pro-European party called We Continue the Change came in second in Hyannis and came in third in Bulgaria. In Boston, actually, the pro-European party won by far the most votes. So, there was even a little bit of a difference between how Bulgarians on Cape Cod voted and how Bulgarian in Boston voted. The ones on Cape cod voted much more similarly, proportionally, to the rest of the country.
