Voting as an expatriate is reminiscent of the time that I signed up for a degree by correspondence after having graduated from a residential university; a literally remote and somehow sterile experience.

After South Africa’s constitutional court came to the only possible conclusion, that it would not be permissible to continue to bar citizens living outside the country from voting, I was among those who confirmed that I would be voting at my embassy.

Media reports have it that there were 6000 of us who did this worldwide; in London it seemed to have been a bit of a show; one report said that there were 150 expatriates who signed up to vote in Vancouver; at the South African embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria, I was one of 15 on the voters’ roll in the country, and that number included the ambassador and some embassy staff.

As to the procedural dimensions, I can testify that everything was done by the book as if I were at the voting station in Cape Town of which I last saw the inside a decade ago; my identity document and passport formally checked (by an official who otherwise knows perfectly well who I am); the ballot paper and envelopes formally issued; and after my trip behind the column to make my tick in private, my thumbnail solemnly inked, in accordance with the law and against the possibility that I would attempt to masquerade as one of the other 14 people on the roll.

There seemed not to have been a lot of publicity that expatriates would be voting on April 15, a week ahead of South Africa’s April 22 elections on home soil. I wonder how many expatriates will turn up on April 22 and find that they were wrong to believe that this too was voting day for them? I found it noteworthy that some major South African media reported little or nothing about the fact that expatriates were to vote on a different day.

I will not return to my previous musings on why it is desirable for South African expatriates to be allowed to vote, except possibly to add the note that South African passport-holders who reside abroad long-term do still live with the consequences of our government’s actions, policies or lack of them (trips to London now require a visa application, for instance). I might add that even after living outside the country for eight years, the internet makes it reasonably possible to stay informed about political developments (allowing for the biases of individual media, including those sites that I visit regularly; the completely discredited – notably the SABC – I avoid altogether).

It is a peculiar business, this sort of electoral involvement at a considerable remove. For instance, the Americans have organisations such as Democrats Abroad that helped to mobilise voters last year. Living as a long-term expatriate makes the country of one’s birth an ever-more remote reality; the compulsion still to vote is a flashpoint at the conjunction of personal and political psychology.

Another interesting dimension awaits, although not fully comparable. Bulgaria will hold elections for members of the European Parliament on June 7, and EU citizens who are permanently resident in the country are eligible to vote, provided that they register by April 27 and accept that by registering here they will relinquish their right to vote in European Parliament elections in any other country. It will be interesting to see, this time round, how many citizens of other EU countries choose to exercise their vote here. There is an argument that it is more meaningful to vote where you live and work rather than in the country whose passport you hold – or so the EU presumably reasons.

As compelling (just one of a number of adjectives that may be applied) as I find the current antics of Bulgarian politicians across the spectrum, including the "cleaning crisis" as described in our coverage in The Sofia Echo and in Petar Kostadinov’s Weekend Blog, continuing to hold my foreign passport means that I may have a say in an election 8000km away but have no business with a ballot box closer to home – and note the use of the word "home".

These are just a few musings that have come to mind in the past few days every time the purple mark on my thumbnail catches my eye, or I read another item about the April 22 elections. I may add, by the way, that all those years ago, I gave up on that correspondence course. It was just too…remote.