Voting machine

Members of the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) visited yesterday the warehouse where voting machines were delivered to inspect their number, storage and security.

The Central Election Commission (CEC) has opened a bidding procedure for the award of a public procurement contract with the subject: "Hiring of 3,000 special devices with installed software for electronic machine voting", according to the CEC's website.

For 60 days we can produce the necessary voting machines in the elections for MEPs, said Alexander Chobanov, who is the head of the National School of Robotics. He announced that their development was priced at 1,900 euros.

There will be no remote electronic voting in the next elections because it cannot guarantee the security of the elections, parliamentary legal committee chair Danail Kirilov, GERB, told BNR this morning.

The Ombudsman will refer the postponement of the electronic voting to the Constitutional Court. The national Ombudsman, Maya Manolova, announced this intention at a discussion "For and Against Machine and Remote Electronic Voting", organized by Bulgaria for the Citizens Movement (BCM) on 26th of November, reports BNT. 

Sofia. At a meeting today, the Central Election Commission (CEC) has decided to appeal against the Sofia Administrative Court's ruling over the introduction of voting machines, CEC Spokesman Aleksandar Andreev told Focus News Agency. The commission's arguments will be known when the appeal is filed, which will be done today, he said.

Ahead of the elections in the Serbian capital scheduled for March 4, Serbia's outdated voting system has one advantage: it is immune from potential hack attacks, experts say.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

The Central Election Commission (CEC) has fended off claims that the vote might be contested due to the lack of electronic voting.

CEC spokesperson Aleksandar Andreev has told the Bulgarian National Radio that the development is far from being the most substantial claim one could lodge over the election.

Election authorities in Bulgaria are not to decide until Saturday on whether voting machines will be commissioned for the snap poll due in a month.

The final say is expected a day into the election campaign, after the Central Election Commission (CEC) said needed more time than the initial deadline on Friday as it was waiting for a report by a special subcommission.