Vote counting

An amendment broadening the postal voting regulations has been proposed to Parliament as part of the Health Ministry's legislation and is scheduled for a plenary vote on Thursday. 

"Around 20% of the paper ballots cast in the first round of yesterday's local elections were counted as invalid - this is the result of the cancellation of machine voting".

Voter turnout for the whole country as of 11:00 am is at 12.3%, Central Election Commission Spokesperson Rositsa Mateva said at a briefing Saturday at 11:30 am. 

The lowest turnout is registered in Plovdiv - 7.25%, and the highest in Bolyarovo Municipality (Southeastern Bulgaria) - 33.94%.

There will be 760 sections abroad in 68 countries, said Ivan Kondov - head of a working group for voting abroad at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, BNR reported.

He described as the biggest difficulty the delivery of machines and ballots to all sections abroad in a possible second round of the presidential election.

The Central Election Commission has determined the conditions and rules for video recording and video broadcasting, taking into account the results of the voting in the polling stations.

It will take place after the end of the Election day - when the voting is declared over, during which the recording of voters' lists is not allowed.

The snap parliamentary elections on July 11 will cost BGN15.75 million, Chair of the Central Election Commission (CEC) Kamelia Neikova told BNT today. The draft estimate is made taking into account the supply of another 1,500 voting machines.

In 700 polling sections in the country will probably be placed two voting machines and not only one. This is the assessment of the Central Election Commission based on the results of the first test voting with machines, which took place today.

The extreme right Golden Dawn party says it plans to request a nationwide ballot recount after it narrowly failed to reach the 3 percent threshold of votes required to enter parliament in Sunday's general election.

In a statement, the party said it planned to take the legal action to challenge what it described as a "scandalous result."

Ahead of the elections in the Serbian capital scheduled for March 4, Serbia's outdated voting system has one advantage: it is immune from potential hack attacks, experts say.

"The most susceptible system to hacking is the e-voting system, which Serbia doesn't have and will not have any time soon," Bojan Klacar, from the Center for Free Elections and Democracy, CeSid, told BIRN.

Establishing and introducing electronic voting by 2019 for all types of elections is the project of the State Agency for Electronic Governance, co-financed by the European Social Fund. The estimated cost for realization is BGN 1.5 million.