Government provides voting machines in every polling station at next elections

The Council of Ministers on February 12 voted to approve the introduction of voting machine in every polling station at the next parliamentary elections. Prime Minister Boyko Borissov also expressed support for the voting machines.

Prime Minister Boyko Borissov assigned Deputy Prime Minister Tomislav Donchev and the Central Election Commission (CEC) to fulfill the task. He said that he is taking this step because he does not want suspicions that the government does not want machine voting. He added, however, that he was not convinced that this would solve anything.

Borissov said that it would be up to Parliament to decide whether to have both machine voting and voting by paper ballot.

Deputy Prime Minister Tomislav Donchev, said that to him it was nonsense to maintain two parallel voting systems because this makes the elections extremely expensive.

If the desire and will of the people, and of most parties, is to vote in machines, then it will be in voting machines, he added. Therefore, every polling station will be equipped with voting machine at the next parliamentary elections.

Donchev also said that legislative changes should be considered because of the introduction of machine voting.

PM Borissov added that very serious work has to be done for the protection of these machines from cyber attacks.