This week is key for the future of the election rules, and attempts at rapid changes pose serious risks to the electoral process. This was stated by former Chairperson of the Central Election Commission Ivilina Aleksieva in the program “Live Day” on NOVA NEWS.
According to her, there is a lack of the necessary political and expert consensus for the introduction of a new voting technology - scanning devices. “A technology cannot be introduced hastily. It must be tested, its rules - clearly written, and only then applied”, stressed Aleksieva. According to her, the biggest risk is related to the lack of time. If the scanners do not work on election day, there is a real danger that there will be no technical possibility for either machine or paper voting. “This could lead to a situation where the elections simply cannot be held”, she warned.
Aleksieva also drew attention to the danger that scanners could count as valid ballots that are invalid under the Electoral Code. “Different ways of marking - dots and circles - could lead to distortion of the result and new cases before the Constitutional Court”, she pointed out.
The former CEC chairman stressed that none of the Constitutional Court's recommendations related to previous elections had been resolved in the proposed texts for second reading. Among the problems remain the voter lists, control over the counting of ballots, and the lack of clear procedures in case of discrepancies between machine data and receipts.
Aleksieva identified as a more reasonable option the proposal to introduce scanning devices after January 1, 2027, with the possibility of preliminary testing in partial elections. “If we stay with the current way of voting, but with more observers and better control, the risk of serious electoral disputes will be significantly lower”, she claims.
According to her, hasty changes will put an extremely high burden on the CEC and the election administration, and the lack of clear rules and certification of technologies could lead to a serious crisis in the electoral process.