Certification of voting machines for June 9 two-in-one elections will be completed by the end of next week

The procedure for certification of the compliance of the voting machines (with the requirements of the Electoral Code) for the upcoming two-in-one elections on June 9 is expected to be compeleted by the end of next week, Valentin Mundrov, caretaker Minister of e-governance told BNT morning programme "The Day Begins" on May 17.

He explained that the machines arrived at the ministry on May 11, and the compliance certification process began on May 13 and is currently about 50% complete. The State Agency for National Security (SANS) is fully present in this process, we have learned our lesson from the last time, Mundrov said.

"On May 2, the methodology was published for public discussion, and on May 9, all proposals were accepted. The difference from the old methodology is the publicity - at an official event we drew the numbers of the machines that will pass the certification process."

"Information Services” is not involved in the certification process, the caretaker minister said. It is carried out by experts from the Ministry of E-governance, the Bulgarian Institute of Metrology and the Bulgarian Institute of Standardisation.

The next step is the trusted build process, which is carried out by the Central Election Commission (CEC). Only then will all the machines be sent to the polling stations.

At this stage, I believe that the confidence of citizens in the machine voting is very high, but we need to go further steps to move to remote voting," Valentin Mundrov said.

There are many hacker attacks and they are increasing as the elections approach - this is the new normal, he said.

"We have taken absolutely all measures to protect ourselves, not to be hacked and not to leak any data."

Sponsored groups from foreign countries outside the EU are behind most of the attacks, the minister explained. One of the most common attacks continues to be DDoS - blocking access to a particular site.