Ombudsman will refer delayed machine voting to the Constitutional Court

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 26^th of November.

In a referendum two and a half years ago, 2 million people backed the electronic votingt, reminded the BCM. They also pointed out that according to the 2016 Election Code, machine voting should be compulsory. The discussion was in response to changes presented by MPs from GERB and United Patriots, according to which the electronic voting was postponed.

The BCM chairman showed a letter in which the Central Election Commision responded to a complaint by their youth organization about what is happening with the electronic voting.

Dimitar Delchev, Chair of the BCM: The CEC says in a very open and objective way that it has sent 9 letters to the Council of Ministers in which CEC says to the government that they need 50 million BGN for the introduction of the machine voting - please give it. And in the last two years, the government has remained deaf to these requests.

Maya Manolova expressed her indignation at the fact that through the transitional and final provisions of the submitted draft law on the passage of foreign allied military forces through the territory of Bulgaria, it is proposed to postpone the law on electronic identification without which the electronic voting cannot be held.

Maya Manolova, Ombudsman of the Republic of Bulgaria: This way of disguising topics of importance for the public in transitional and final regulations simply has to be terminated. There is nothing in common between the Armed Forces and electronic identification and if it is postponed thorugh this law, I will try to refer it to the Cassatio0n Court.

According to Prof. Mihail Konstantinov, a person with long experience in the electoral process, he has doubts about the security of the electronic vote and the machine voting does not speed up the voting process. He pointed out that the experimental machine voting was accompanied by serious faults. He is firm that it will be very difficult to provide machines in all ballot stations in Bulgaria and abroad.

Prof. Mihail Konstantinov: We have ballot stations with 10 voters, with very difficult access, where people have never seen such a facility.

Prof. Konstantinov reminded that there is no machine voting in Europe anywhere. He thinks it makes sense to introduce machine voting in the big cities only.