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The Central Election Commission (CEC) stopped automatic voting in the Veliko Tarnovo district, said CEC spokesman Dimitar Dimitrov. Voting continues with paper ballots only.
By law, these elections must have machines in all sectors of the country with more than 300 voters. These are 9390 sections. For the first time in the elections in Bulgaria there are so many devices. For comparison, in the 2019 European elections, the machines were 3,000 machines. Both then and now, Ciela Norma is responsible for the delivery and maintenance of the devices on Election Day.
It is currently being decided whether to stop machine voting in Dobrich, where there is also a problem. Dimitrov announced that the situation is being investigated further. The district commission was ordered to tour the polling stations and test the voting machine. According to the CEC spokesperson, the problem at Dobrich is rather “peripheral” and involves the exchange of names of people lined up at the bottom of the lists.
“In Dobrich, it does not seem so far that automatic voting will stop,” Dimitrov said.
The problem in Veliko Tarnovo was identified by a Bulgarian Democratic voter. He saw an exchange of names and numbers on the ballot and signaled to the District Election Commission, which alerted the CCA. Democratic Bulgaria confirmed that its list had not been ordered in the originally approved manner.
“I do not want to make any reservations on this subject, I hope everything goes well, there are some irregularities, but we will see what it is about“said coalition co-chair Hristo Ivanov.
It was Democratic Bulgaria that insisted on stopping the voting machine in the district, which was later respected by the CEC.
The problem was related to the names of the candidates and their numbers in the preferences: the first three became the last on the list, explained the CEC spokesman, without specifying which political force was in question. According to him, it is most likely a technical error. Leading the vote will not be the name of the candidate, but the number on the ballot, Dimitrov said.
It’s probably human error. A CEC spokesperson explained that all the lists were uploaded by Ciela Norma, supplier of the machines. Otherwise, the data is sent by the district electoral commission. According to Dimitrov, the vote cast before the suspension of automatic voting will not be lost.
“On Election Day, we will hardly find time to hold anyone accountable, but we have a contractual relationship and there is certainly no way around commitments from either party. Then it will be clear exactly what happened, who exactly uploaded them and in this way I hope“he said.
In the area Veliko tarnovo there are 425 polling stations and 313 have voting machines installed. Initially it was announced that voting had been suspended in 10 sections.
There are also problems with automatic voting in other parts of the country. A problem similar to that of Veliko Tarnovo was found in Dobrich. There are also names exchanged and a name is entered twice on one of the lists, the CEC said. The Central Election Commission is currently deciding whether to suspend automatic voting also in Dobrich.
In various sections of Sofia the machines temporarily stopped working for various reasons: map locked, time inaccurate, software locked, falling to the ground. After debugging, the machines continued to work.
The BSP also announced that it would point out a problem with the voting machine, but in Plovdiv region. According to them, hours before the start of the vote in many places no devices were delivered. One of them is Sadovo, where, according to Mayor Dimitar Zdravkov, on Saturday night there were machines in only 2 of the 19 sections. According to BSP list leader Manol Genov, one of those delivered in Sopot the machines did not work.
Machinesbut votenot available in 9398 sectionsin the country. If a voting machine breaks down, it is not replaced or repaired and voting continues with ballots only. The votes cast so far by machines will be added to the minutes at the end of the electoral day.
There is not much interest in automatic voting. According to the observations of the presidents of the sectional electoral commissions, around a third prefer the voting machine, which is used for the first time in the elections in our country.
President Rumen Radev and BSP leader Cornelia Ninova took advantage of it.
The co-president of “Democratic Bulgaria”, Hristo Ivanov, chose the paper newsletter precisely because of the problems with the machines. Most of the other political leaders also voted on paper.
Turnout at 10 o’clock in the country was 7.58 percent of those eligible to vote., shows the CEC data. The highest is the Montata district – more than 11%, and the lowest is in the Silistra district – below 4%. The CEC summarizes the DEC information on the course of Election Day. At the moment, there are no serious signs of violations, according to the CEC.
In the district of Burgas, a black pen was delivered in one of the sections, with which the ballots were filled and will be considered void. The omission has already been removed.
At 9 o’clock, participation in the elections for the 45th National Assembly was 4.2% according to data from the sociological agency Gallup International from the exit poll in front of the polling stations. This is less than in previous parliamentary elections, when about 6.5 percent of voters went to the polls in the first two hours.
“Participation can be an important factor not only because of the number of voters. The fear of the virus affects different types of electorate differently, which means that it can affect the structure of the vote, especially since participation is a barrier.”the executive director of the sociological agency Parvan Simeonov told BNR.
At 9:30 a.m., voter turnout was 6 percent, according to data from polling agency Alpha Research, bTV reported.
Election day has started, we hope that voters will vote and that the machine voting will not hamper them, Central Election Commission (CEC) spokeswoman Tanya Tsaneva said during the first Election Day briefing.
There are a total of 12,630 sections in the country, of which 283 are mobile. There are 199 sections in the hospitals, 46 are in quarantine. There are 12 sectional electoral commissions in places of detention.
On Saturday there were some difficulties in the delivery of the machines from the regional centers to the respective municipalities and the PECs, but last night all the machines were already in their places in the polling stations, the CEC spokesman said.
“Today, we hope that voters will vote, even if it is not as bright and elastic as we would like. We hope that neither time nor machines make it difficult for them.Tanya Tsaneva said.
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