BULGARIA TO EXPERIMENT WITH VOTING MACHINES

For the first time in Bulgaria, voting machines will be used as an experiment in the European elections on 25^th May. In some polling stations voters will have the opportunity to cast their vote via voting machines along with paper ballots. If the experimental polling technology proves reliable, it will be applied in the next national elections.

Demonstration of the technology was conducted in the Central Election Commission (CEC) on Thursday, 22^nd May.

Alexander Andreev, the spokesperson of Bulgaria’s Central Election Commission explained that the voting machine was enabled by the chairperson of the election commission through a designated button. The ballot is displayed on the screen. Voters will select their choice by touching the screen.

The machine requests for confirmation of the selected choice. Coreections are allwoed if the voter made a mistake. On the basis of the confirmed choice on the machine ballot, the device will print out a receipt, which the voter will fold and post in a box.

When the polls come to an end, the voting machine will print out a paper document with the results from the voting.

Voters can participate in the experiment if their names are in the lists in the polling stations where voting machines will be used.

The data from the voting machines will not be used in counting the votes in the European Elections. It will be only for the purposes of the experiment.