site.btaSupreme Judicial Council's Voting System Confirmed as Flawed

Sofia, August 20 (BTA) - The Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) failed in its attempt Wednesday to show that its electronic system of voting for election of top administrative staff in the judiciary works well. Experts who watched a demonstration of the voting system confirmed earlier suspicions about a number of flaws.

The demonstration came ahead of the forthcoming election of president of the Supreme Court of Cassation. It followed allegations by NGOs and the media that the SJC's electronic voting system does not ensure that voting is fair and secret.

Yavor Djonev, Deputy Chairman of the Bulgarian Association of Software Companies, said after the demonstration that the system does not work in multiple-candidate elections, because it does not create level ground for the candidates.

Besides that, the experts found that during the voting process each SJC member can see the voting panels of the members sitting closest to her/him. In order to keep their own vote secret, a member needs to hide their voting panel from view for the others using one hand.

Yet another issue is that the system cannot eliminate the possibility of one SJC member voting in favour of more than one candidate. The SJC leadership argued that the issue was addressed by a regulation which says that if an SJC member votes in favour of more than one candidate, the surplus votes will be deducted from the total number of votes. According to NGOs, the problem can be solved more easily if the system employs mark-choice ballots, which, if invalid, will be ignored during the vote counting.

SJC Ethics Commission Chairman Yassen Todorov said none of his colleagues would vote for more than one candidate to a particular office, because they are persons of high integrity. But practice shows that the opposite does indeed happen - on a number of occasions in recent months, candidates received more votes in total than the number of the voters.

Todorov organized Wednesday's demonstration of the voting system on his own. Five of his colleagues protested against the way the event was organized. Galina Karagyozova, Yulia Kovacheva, Kamen Ivanov, Elka Atanassova and Kalin Kalpakchiev wrote in a letter that they had learned about the demonstration from the media. They argued that SJC decisions cannot be made unilaterally by individual SJC members.

The five agreed with the external experts and NGOs that the SJC voting system does not work in multiple-candidate elections, because it does not create level ground for simultaneous secret voting. They said SJC should use a system that employs mark-choice ballots.

The system's demonstration was boycotted by the Non-Governmental Organizations Centre Razgrad, one of the main organizations which monitor judicial reform. The Centre said the real question is not how buttons are pressed, but which candidate is preferred by SJC and why.

The Sofia ambassadors of EU member states and the Resident Advisor for the European Commission's Cooperation and Verification Mechanism, Joeri Tavanier, are invited to test the SJC voting system on Thursday.