The caretaker government fulfilled professionally, transparently and in an excellent dialogue with the Central Election Commission (CEC) all its commitments according to the Election Code (EC) regarding the organizational and technical preparation of the parliamentary elections on October 27, 2024. This is stated in the report of the official office on the material and technical provision of the vote, prepared by the Minister of Innovation and Growth Rosen Karadimov in his capacity as the coordinator of the bodies of the executive power with responsibilities under the electoral legislation (Ministry of Finance, Ministry of e-Government, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Justice and Regional Governors). The document is published on the official website of the Council of Ministers.
The government made every effort to upgrade and significantly improve the organization, fairness and publicity of the vote within its powers. The Public Council at the CEC highly rated the measures taken by the state administration. The caretaker government proposed to the CEC a number of measures to improve the rules and procedures for ensuring machine voting. Measures were taken to destroy the machine voting paper stored by the municipal and regional administrations from previous elections, the official office writes in the report and add that the implementation of the voting commitments by the official government was also highly rated by the independent observers - the international observers from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe have expressly welcomed the good organization of the elections by the electoral administration.
The numbers of the authentication machines were publicly pulled, and also for the first time, the serial numbers of the machines themselves, rather than their numbers from the CEC list, were set in the random number generator. To ensure greater security, a check of the parameterization software was also included in the authentication methodology. Such a check has not been done so far. It is this software that configures the machines in terms of candidate-deputy lists, preferences, according to the relevant RIC. State Agency "National Security" (DANS) again provided observers to the inspection process, external experts were also involved, the interim government also states.
The office points out that this is the most strictly checked vote so far and specifies that more than 1/3 of all voting machines have been checked - out of 9510 devices, 3306 machines have been authenticated. For comparison, in the previous elections, 664 machines were checked. Twice as many specialists from the state administration were provided to carry out the inspections – over 50. For the first time, at the insistence of the executive power, the CEC allowed representatives of the media into the warehouse for storing the machines during the inspections. The organization created in the Main Directorate "Civil Registration and Administrative Service" (DG GRAO) and the improved communication with the other ministries involved in the preparation of the elections, as well as with the municipalities, ensured a problem-free, lawful and in many cases early fulfillment of all the duties of the DG GRAO regarding the electoral process, the caretaker government also reports and explains , that for the past elections, 719 polling stations were opened in 57 countries, as well as 26 polling stations in places of deprivation of liberty to ensure the opportunity for all persons to exercise their right to vote.
The official government indicates that the activity of the Communication Center at the CEC was optimized, which has the task of receiving and sending to the CEC the protocols of the work of the CECs abroad after the election day. By order of Prime Minister Dimitar Glavchev, the Ministry of the Interior created, with full transparency, the organization for the protection of public order and the protection of the vote, and for the prevention and counteraction of crimes, they state in the report and recall the creation of the National Interdepartmental Unit between the Prosecutor's Office, the Ministry of the Interior and the National Security Agency, which according to the Election the code implements the coordination and interaction between the institutions for legality in the conduct of the elections. The Ministry of the Interior opened a 24-hour hotline for alerts related to violations of the electoral process. Every single signal is reversed, the report adds.
Video surveillance and video recording during the counting of ballots by the SEC is an additional tool to ensure the transparency and fairness of the elections. 11,400 out of 11,626 (98.06%) sections had live online broadcasting. For comparison, in the previous elections on June 9, 2024, there was live online broadcasting in 11,092 sections out of 11,630 (95.37%), the office informed in its report. An upgrade was made in terms of real-time video surveillance and video recording of the work of the Sectional Election Commissions (SECs) after the end of the election day – voice messages that alert SIC members if the battery is low and they need to power up the devices, as well as if the devices are not positioned correctly, the report also says.
All available recordings from the online broadcast have been uploaded and are available on the portal https://evideo.bg, with the first uploading of recordings taking place at 10:00 p.m. on election night. After returning the devices to Sofia, "Information Service" began the removal of records from them, and the entire process was completed by the end of the working day on November 1, 2024. 65 devices were found to be missing records. The information about the lack of records in the devices will be provided to the CEC for follow-up action, the caretaker government announced in the report.
The Ministry of the Interior and the State Security Service presented reports addressed to the President, the National Assembly and the Council of Ministers, in which they gave a full account of what was done during the elections, acting Prime Minister Dimitar Glavchev told journalists yesterday on the occasion of the parliamentary elections. Glavchev pointed out that he is familiar with the allegations of election violations and recalled that the sectional commissions include people from all parties, but there are no representatives of the executive power. He also said that based on the data in the reports, the three institutions will be able to make their decisions.