Supreme Administrative Court revokes double counting of election results

Bulgaria's Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) on November 4 overturned part of a decision of the Central Election Commission (CEC), in which it is provided that after the manual counting of the control receipts from the voting machines, the data should be entered in a protocol, an integral part of the protocol, reflecting the result of the machine voting.

The SAC judges have accepted that the CEC has the right to conduct a control counting, to the extent it deems appropriate, but this counting cannot affect the election result. The only document certifying the result of the voting is the protocol, which is printed by the machine. The counting of the receipts is only a control mechanism and cannot be entered in the protocols.