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Bulgarian court reinstates machine voting

Photo: Ani Petrova

During a five-hour-long session, the Supreme Administrative Court canceled the recent decision of the Central Election Commission that banned machine voting. CEC made the decision a day before the local elections. However, after the court's ruling, citizens will be able to exercise their right to vote by using a machine in the runoffs on Sunday.

Voting with only paper ballots in the first round was the result of MPs spreading information to SANS that the Deputy Minister of Electronic Government illegally filmed and transferred to a flash drive the process of generating the code used to verify the software of the machines.

In their reasons, the supreme judges wrote that the decision of the election commission when it comes to the runoff was illegal. There will be no cassation of the vote in the first round.

"In order to have machine voting in the second round, the certification procedure for the voting machines and software must be completed. We are waiting for the Minister of e-Government", the chair of the CEC, Kamelia Neikova, told the BNR.

"There are no obstacles to the certification procedure of the machines before the second round of the local elections", MP from PP-DB Bozhidar Bozhanov, commented. He added that the temporary parliamentary committee checking all facts and circumstances related to the security of machine voting will hold a meeting today with the chair of SANS, Plamen Tonchev.




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