"CEC started on time the procedure. This time, everything is happening on time. Veselin Todorov, executive director of "Siela Norma", announced this to BNR. - the company that until now provides the machine voting. It is expected to do so for the vote on October 27.
"The machines are the same, the printers are the same and the software is the same. We cannot have any new claims. Our claims are just to be a normal paper".
A few days ago, Todorov warned that in the last elections - in June of this year, the paper did not correspond to the printers. The official minister of innovations - Rosen Karadimov, pointed out that these are speculations, and the paper complies with the standards.
"We are not given access to the paper in any way. We touch it for the first time when we install the machines in the sections. We cannot make any judgment, evaluation or analysis.
When we were delivering the paper - most recently in October 2022, across the country out of 11 thousand machines, there were two with some sort of problems related to the printers, not necessarily the paper. In the last election, it was 100. As a percentage, the problems are growing, which means that each time the paper is perhaps worse than the previous one. I'm talking about the last three times. I haven't seen any lab tests. Nobody owes them to me, but maybe they do to society.
Bulgaria is not a large producer of paper. It can hardly be said that there is a developed laboratory network in our country. It would be best to take this to one of the global labs, for example in Taiwan, where the printers are manufactured.
The law states that the paper used is provided by the BNB. We assume that this is some kind of security measure, although there are many more reliable ones. Let's say we like and hold on to 19th and 20th century technology.
Veselin Todorov also commented on the problem with the obsolete flash memory of the machines.
"These flash drives are not a very reliable information carrier from the point of view of its archiving. They can be used for some period, but not for 10 or 20 years. For some of them it has been more than 5 years. In our opinion, they must be replaced. They are not very expensive. Even a small change in the data causes the machine to stop. The machines do a test every time and if they detect even a minimal discrepancy, they refuse to work.
If these flash drives start to fail, this is a potential and serious problem. It could happen on election day. We are prohibited from replacing any components, although we have the technology to replace all components, including the entire machine. The moment such a problem occurs, we stop machine voting in the relevant section.
He also commented on the agreed price with the CEC.
"It is best to compare prices with similar services we have performed before. The last similar elections – parliamentary, were in April 2023 when we achieved some reasonable price. The current price is about BGN 100 thousand lower. Our contracts are increasingly lower in price and against the background of the accumulating inflation. Let's say that this hundred thousand will not be fatal and we will be able to do our work in the best possible way. It is a bit speculative that we asked for more money. We wanted more compared to a price that is indicative, i.e. it is some basis for negotiation. The final result from the CEC's point of view is that they managed to make another percentage or something decrease after about 4% inflation. This will be at the company's expense and no one's fee will be reduced.
"But this is a topic for the National Assembly to reflect on". We use about ten thousand machines, and there are 12,800. It makes sense to have machines in all sections, Todorov further explained in the program "Before all".
Scanning machines can be supplied, which provide the same technology for summary results for those who voted on paper, he also pointed out.
"If we are talking about new deliveries of machines, maybe we should think in this direction. There are quite a few companies in the world that make such machines. To guarantee the security of the paper vote as well as the machine vote".
There is no problem from the point of view of operating systems and software managing the periphery, Todorov noted.
"The machine software authentication process is something to focus on. We are working on machine authentication.
I expect the contract with the CEC to be concluded by the end of the week, he pointed out.