A number of violations during the counting on election night were shown by video surveillance. In Bukovlak, one of the commissions stamped the ballot in the presence and with the consent of a candidate MP, BNT reports.
According to the latest data from 22:00 on election night, automatic reports from video surveillance sent to the Ministry of Electronic Governance, the Central Election Commission and the regional election commissions show that out of all 11,653 polling stations, there was no video broadcast in 168. This means that in 98.56% of all stations, video surveillance was turned on and broadcasting.
A missed stamp on one of the ballots caused tension in one of the stations in Bukovlak.
The chairman of the commission: "It happened in the rush to miss a stamp.
"Commission member: "Leave it aside!"
"We won't leave it aside. We'll discuss it at the end, leave it for now."
"Petya! Petya! Is the gentleman on the list?"
"I'm not. And I'm a candidate for a representative of the people and I've given a certificate."
The election protocol makes it clear who the candidate for a representative of the people is. The unstamped ballot is set aside until the counting is completed."Put that one in, stamp it. It's one, it was a mistake. I don't mind you putting it in. Here was the piece of paper somewhere, here was the cut on top. Hey, look, a decent man, ***! He waited, saw and showed them." During this time, the chairwoman stamps the ballot and puts it in the pile with the valid ones.
In another section, again in Bukovlak, they also forgot to stamp the ballot.
"According to the CEC, this is invalid! Well, we'll put it in the invalid ones!" A third section in Bukovlak gave two ballots to one voter. One has a marked vote, but no stamps, and the second is blank and stamped."Because the mistake is ours, not the person's, so we don't cancel his vote."
"If you want, put two stamps there and that's it."
"It doesn't matter which party it is."
"Yes, we haven't looked at the party."
The polling stations are massively failing to follow the CEC's instructions and are dumping the ballot boxes on the table instead of taking out the ballots one by one. In many places, the camera is too far away and you can't see what's happening during the counting. Despite the instructions, many commissions did not show the ballots in front of the video surveillance devices. And in a polling station in the capital, they read the CEC's instructions on election night and counted the ballots for more than 6 hours."If you want to leave, shut up. You're asking me about elementary things!"
"If we leave this commission, what will happen, what will be the consequences?"
"Maybe five years in prison."
"It's better than what we're doing here."
A minute after 8:00 p.m., the first 680 or so polling stations turned on the cameras and declared the end of election day. The battle with the cameras began, while others rushed to open the ballot boxes. In one of the polling stations in Bukovlak, the counting of ballots in the polling station passed before Kiril Petkov's eyes. A NOVA investigation found that in just 15 minutes, the commission counted 12 invalid ballots.
In some places, the visibility requirement was not met, due to a device placed too far away or a member of the commission in front of the camera. And as the evening progressed, tensions rose.
Video surveillance ended after midnight.
85% of calls to the MEU contact center from polling stations were related to scanning the wrong QR code. Election commission members tried to scan the QR code created by MEU for blind voters, instead of the one to start the video broadcast. MEU provided relevant guidance and provided assistance to all inquiries.
168 polling stations were left without video surveillance during the vote count
Individual inquiries were related to the lack of QR codes, a frozen screen, continuous scanning of the QR code or the operation of the broadcast counter with a frozen screen. The MEU call center was available to the election commissions until 24:00 on election day.
Only 110 out of all 9354 voting machines showed defects on election day, which is 1.18%. This is almost twice as good a result as in the previous elections, when defective machines accounted for 2% of all. No software problems were registered.
In preparation for the early parliamentary elections on April 19, the duties of the Ministry of Electronic Governance included certification of the machines, namely control over the software, its secure construction and subsequent monitoring of the installation in order to guarantee the reliability of the machine vote, as well as ensuring the technical aspects of video surveillance.
With the decisions of the CEC, for the first time, the MEU prepared special QR codes for blind voters, from which they could obtain information about the candidate lists. In addition, the MEU also provided tactile templates for the blind in 400 sections in 5 electoral districts - Sofia-city, Plovdiv-city and Blagoevgrad.
The MEU does not yet have data on how many blind citizens voted with tactile templates.