2024-04-26 11:14:52
- The CEC is alarming – the law requires 20 working days, but there are none
- Only one company expressed a willingness to supply the devices. ITs are also being sought to certify them
The Ministry of e-Government and the Institutes of Metrology and Standardization must work without days off around the holidays for machine voting to take place.
This was warned by the Central Election Commission. Its deputy chairperson, Rositsa Mateva, is even convinced that the deadlines cannot be met due to the accumulation of non-working days on Easter, and before that – on May 1, as well as the last holiday before the elections, the 24th.
The reason for the fear that we may again be left without voting machines is that in the Electoral Code the deadlines for certifying the machines are on working days, explained the deputy head of the CEC. There are 20 of them, but they start running from the day the commission hands over the authentication machines, and there is still no contract for them.
“The deadline of 20 working days for the three institutions cannot be met. Now there are many holidays coming up, and if the three institutions do not work through them, it will be difficult to comply”, Mateva told bTV. Something more –
this is the only term in the code that is explicitly stated in business days
In the elections last fall, the CEC decided not to vote with machines the day before the vote. This happened after a scandal involving the then deputy minister of e-governance, Mihail Stoinov. DANS announced that he was recording the machine authentication procedure. Stoinov himself explained that he filmed how the test process was happening and with the hash code that was displayed on the screens at that moment, there was no way to manipulate the vote – it was public anyway, it was pasted in every polling station in order to check with the delivered machine. Stoinov was also protected by a number of IT experts.
However, the formal basis for the CEC’s decision to remove the machines was the lack of a certificate from the ministry that they correspond to the requirements of the Election Code. And it was missing because the deadline for the certification to be re-done has expired according to the code. The department itself replied that this was not the case, and PP-DB gave the decision to the Supreme Administrative Court. The VAC returned the machine voting for the November 5 runoff, requiring the MEU to install the new software and certify the machines in just 48 hours.
“On the part of the CEC, the procedure for the machines has been started, it is expected that the executor of the order and the Ministry of Electronic Management (MEU) will keep their commitments,” Rositsa Mateva also said on TV on Thursday morning.
The CEC launched a public procurement for the machines on April 9. Before that, another was released, but it was only for the European elections, before the president released the decree for a 2 in 1 vote. Only one candidate responded to it – the “Siela Norma” company. The company organizes all elections with machines so far. The CEC has already invited her to present her offer.
“I very much hope that the negotiation with the candidate will take place in an extremely short period of time, that a contract can be concluded and that the electronic ballots can be prepared”, commented the chairperson of the CEC, Kamelia Neikova, later in the day.
“We are in a hurry mainly because of the certification of conformity, which must be done by the ME, the Institute of Metrology and the Institute of Standardization. The plan in the CEC is still
in early May to provide the authentication software
of the three institutions, so that they have enough time to work calmly and that this 20-day period written in the Electoral Code for certification of compliance is respected”, explained Neykova to BNT.
“The MEU will fulfill its commitments and will take all necessary actions to certify the technical devices for machine voting in time for the upcoming elections”, the relevant minister Valentin Mundrov assured “24 Chasa”.
“Our efforts are aimed at a maximally open and transparent process, because it is necessary to restore the trust of Bulgarian citizens in machine voting and because the main task of the caretaker government is to organize the preparation and conduct of fair and democratic elections”, he added. In order to ensure the authentication process, days ago he called for the inclusion of people from the IT sector as external experts. The ministry will recruit until April 29.
