© Georgi Kozhukharov
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The decision of the Central Election Commission (CEC) to introduce manual counting of machine voting receipts is an attempt to return the ballot paper and to create chaos at the end of election day. It will make machine voting meaningless and will return old problems that have been introduced to solve – such as errors in manually filled in protocols and in the counting of votes, as well as endless counting in the section committees. It increases the possibilities for manipulations and contradicts the Electoral Code, according to which the reporting of the results is done by printing the protocol by the machines.
Such positions have been expressed by election experts in the last few days after the decision, which also showed an unexpected coalition between GERB, MRF, BSP and “There is such a people”. The proposal for 100% manual counting was made by GERB, explained the deputy chairman of the commission Emil Voinov (BSP). Representatives of these parties who voted in the CEC, in addition to accepting it without debate, remain silent on the subject. And some of the leaders of the formations that supported him commented that machine voting is easy to manipulate (Boyko Borissov once again), a similar statement was made by Cornelia Ninova, who saw “hysteria” in the reactions and this, according to her, also raised suspicions of manipulation through machines .
The political formations “Democratic Bulgaria”, “We continue the change” and “Stand up BG! We are coming” appealed the decision to The Supreme Administrative Court will also rule on Thursday (November 4).
The general effect, according to experts, is the strengthening of distrust in the electoral process, which may affect the turnout, and if this decision is maintained, it creates preconditions to request a challenge to the results of the vote.
New majority in the CEC
The CEC’s decision was taken after a report on changes to the guidelines was presented last Friday (October 29th) by Emil Voinov, deputy chairman of the BSP quota commission, stating that the receipts would have to be counted. (So far, there are 9,400 machine-voting sections in the country and another 208 abroad). He said the proposal had been discussed in a working group. After a brief acquaintance with the text, there were objections only from the spokesperson of the commission Rositsa Mateva (“Stand up BG! We are coming!”) And Lyubomir Gavrilov (“Democratic Bulgaria”), who expressed concern that the manual commissions would be confused with the manual counting. create a precondition to challenge the election results.
Despite the arguments of both, there was no substantive debate in committee. It is not known what are the arguments of the so-called working group for the introduction of 100% counting of receipts. The decision on the Methodical Instructions was adopted by 12 votes in favor of the representatives of GERB, BSP, MRF and “There is such a people”. “Against” voted Rositsa Mateva from “Stand up BG! We are coming!” and Lyubomir Georgiev from the quota of “Democratic Bulgaria”. The other representative of “Democratic Bulgaria” in the CEC, Tsvetozar Tomov, did not attend the meeting, but on Sunday he criticized the decision and called on his colleagues to overturn it, because it would make machine voting meaningless.
Two weeks ago the same majority in the CEC decided to support the position of the district election commission in Stara Zagora not to register the list of “Democratic Bulgaria” because of the case of electronic signatures. (Then Rositsa Mateva also voted in favor).
It is not clear from the minutes of the meeting what the arguments of the commission were for the introduction of the manual counting of the control receipts. Dnevnik asked the rapporteur on the issue, Emil Voinov, who said the decision was made “so that there is no doubt about the machine result”. He added that the proposal came to the working group from the representatives of GERB and commented that only the data in the protocol, which is published by the machine, which is also contained in the flash memories, will be taken to report the results of the vote.
The control count protocol will only be published on the CEC website, but no information on the final results will be taken from it. According to him, this is “an additional tool with which everyone can check whether there is a difference between the machine voting file and the completed protocol”.
In addition, the adopted new texts of the guidelines state that only votes for parties and coalitions without preferences will be counted. Asked by Dnevnik why this was so, Voinov replied: “We decided that there was no need to make it difficult for the commissions to count the preferences.”
The political arguments “for” and “against”
Thus, a standard text in the methodological instructions created a case with the consideration of the election results and the processing process, but it also grew into a political issue.
Immediately after the decision of the counting commission, the co-chair of “Stand up BG! We are coming!” Maya Manolova asked what has changed in the last month in the position of the Socialist Party and the formation of Slavi Trifonov, who in the previous vote were against GERB’s proposal to count the receipts in all sections.
Election expert Velko Miloev, who is part of the CEC’s Public Council, also commented, that according to him the voting in the commission took place on a party principle, in which “ITN and BSP have changed the plate, and DB and” Stand up BG! We come “are left in the minority.”
According to Manolova, the decision “severely violates” the Electoral Code and is an attempt to return the manipulations and thefts to the vote in the sectional election commissions (PECs). “Machine voting was introduced so as not to touch the ballots at the hands of party representatives in the sectional commissions. Under Borissov’s rule, Bulgarians realized that it did not matter who voted but who counted. When PEC members wrote results, they corresponded. “The door to vote theft is wide open by the majority of GERB, BSP, MRF and ITN in the CEC, which adopted this decision,” Manolova said before filing the appeal with the Supreme Administrative Court, which was supported by “We continue.” the change “.
Democratic Bulgaria appealed with an argument that the Electoral Code nowhere imposes an obligation on the section commissions to count control receipts and fill in additional protocols. So in practice The CEC completes and amends the code, believe the union. “If a 100% count of these receipts is introduced, the work of election commissions will be severely hampered and risk leading to a failure in the reporting of election results, which in turn will be used as an argument for a return to paper voting,” the co-chair warned. of “Democratic Bulgaria” Hristo Ivanov.
From “We continue the change” believe that the return to manual counting of paper receipts it can also create unnecessary tension on election day.
The press centers of the MRF and “There is such a people” did not answer the questions sent to them, and after being asked for comment, Elka Stoyanova – a member of the CEC from the quota of “There is such a people”, also refused to comment on why she voted for “with the words that the CEC is a collective body and only speakers can take a stand on these issues.
The Socialists, who in the 45th parliament supported the bill “There is such a people” for the introduction of fully machine voting, first reacted through the position of the candidate for MP and leader of the list in Shumen Ivan Ivanov. According to party members, Ivanov is close to Cornelia Ninova, so the opinion was most likely agreed with her. It states that the CEC decision does not contradict the Electoral Code and rather, “reassures voters that election results will not be manipulated”. Ivanov also defines as “insinuations” the allegation of interaction between political forces. “We have expressed our position on the post-election result – we will seek the formation of a stable government outside GERB and MRF,” Ivanov said.
On Friday after the CEC voted on the decision, GERB leader Boyko Borissov expressed a similar thesis and congratulated the commission on the decision, saying it was “a step towards transparency or at least to some extent not daring to lie as much as the previous time”.
While GERB was the ruling party and its representatives headed the election commission, its members firmly refused to listen to President Rumen Radev’s proposal for a control count of the receipts and stubbornly defended the machine vote.. A few months later, when the former rulers found themselves in the role of opposition, Borissov repeatedly spread the thesis that the machine vote was being manipulated and therefore all the receipts from the machine voting should be counted. Then, however, the proposal of GERB’s representatives in the Central Election Commission, whose composition was changed after the April vote, received support only from the MRF, and so the idea was rejected. The GERB-UDF coalition challenged before the SAC the then decision of the CEC, which did not provide for the counting of control receipts from the machines in all sections, but only in some of them, but the court rejected the appeal.
On Tuesday night, Cornelia Ninova commented to BNT that “counting the receipts does not cancel the machine voting, it is a control whether the machine reports the result correctly.” “There were suspicions of manipulating the software, the count would prove that these suspicions were unfounded. But seeing what hysteria has gripped some people not to gloss over the abuse of votes, I’m starting to think the suspicions are valid.”
The press center of President Rumen Radev stated that they would not comment now.
The risks of the decision
Election experts commented that if the CEC really wanted to check whether there was any interference in the software of the machines, it should have decided to count the preferences as well. “Yes, they will not look at the preferences, which is a relief for the PEC, but it is logically contradictory, because in our electoral system the preferences are part of the election results,” Velko Miloev said.
According to him, as well as according to the election expert Stoil Stoilov, the control counting of the receipts will lead to:
- delay in the election process
- gathering of members of the section commissions during the transmission of the minutes
- false counting of receipts
- attempts to sabotage the election process
- reducing confidence in machine voting
- challenging the election results
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– Stoilov, who is also a member of the CEC’s public council, gives an example of why sectional commissions will be difficult: each will have to fill in at least 3 protocols, and if there are two machines in the commission, the protocols will be filled in 6. ” let’s go back to the mistakes that are made either out of illiteracy, or out of fatigue, or maliciously, “Stoilov added. He suggests that it is the prospect of a long election night that will lead many commissions not to actually count the receipts, but to copy the results of the machine protocol.
According to Stoilov, counting the pieces of paper creates conditions for attempts to sabotage the election process.
Someone can always hide one or two receipts or take out additional ones. Thus, starting the counting of receipts raises doubts about the system, which can be used to subsequently torpedo confidence in the election process.
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elected expert
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According to Stoilov, there are discrepancies in the official and control protocols, this could become a basis for challenging the election results.
A prerequisite for this is the fact that according to the Electoral Code, the control receipts after the voting are placed in an opaque box, packed and sealed with paper tape, before moving to the result of the machine vote, and not counted, and in this meaning the decision of the election commission contradicts the Electoral Code.
Stoilov reiterated his thesis, which he has expressed on other occasions, that in order to increase and strengthen the trust in the machine vote and to prove possible manipulation of the machine software, it is enough to make a control count of the receipts only in some sections – most well in 10% of them in all municipalities.
Even if the Supreme Administrative Court rejects the appeals from “Stand up BG! We are coming!”, “We continue the change” and “Democratic Bulgaria”, the Central Election Commission could reconsider its decision at any time until the elections.
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