President Rumen Radev advocates for machine voting to combat election violations

According to President Rumen Radev, cardinal changes are needed in the way of voting and in vote counting.

At a meeting with students at Plovdiv University today, March 13, the Head of State also said that the election legislation should be carefully considered and recalled that there are cases of entire electoral commissions being bought, with even video surveillance failing to stop them from placing ballots they had marked in the ballot boxes.

In order to tackle electoral violations, President Rumen Radev advocated the introduction of machine voting:

"Indeed, electronic voting is 100% one of the ways to tackle this issue. Whether and how it will return is now a matter for the Bulgarian legislature. I say this is one way to restore confidence in the elections, because what has been happening recently is that the institutions have delegitimised each other. This totally pushes people away from the electoral process and from the ballot boxes. This is unacceptable for a democratic country because fair elections are in the foundation of democracy, they are the foundation of the legitimacy of our institutions, and we cannot continue in this way any longer."