site.btaUPDATED Over 99.5% of Voting Sections Across Bulgaria Covered by Video Surveillance, Innovation Minister Karadimov Says

More than 99.5% of the country's voting sections were covered with video surveillance, said here on Monday during a briefing at the Council of Ministers Innovation and Growth Minister Rosen Karadimov, who was designated by the caretaker Government to coordinate the October 27 snap parliamentary elections.

The briefing was also attended by caretaker Electronic Governance Minister Valentin Mundrov.

According to Minister Karadimov, the caretaker Government has "done its job perfectly" on the organisation of the video surveillance at the voting sections.

"Moreover, for all the problems that arose in the last few days related to complaints, challenges, comments, the arguments for them are drawn from the video surveillance. This means that the video surveillance as a process, which covered more than 99% of the polling stations, has fully ensured the fairness of the vote," Minister Rosen Karadimov said.

Karadimov recalled that the caretaker Government was responsible for measures that were not directly related to the vote, but provided it logistically.

Regarding the paper for the machine voting, Karadimov pointed out that the legislative change of 2022, which entrusted the paper only to the printing house of the Bulgarian National Bank (BNB), was correct.

The allegations of poor quality of the paper supplied by the BNB printing press can be rather described as heavy speculation, he argued. Evidence in this direction is that 125 machines (1.31%) out of a total of 9,510 were defective at the Oct. 27 elections.

He also pointed out that the Government has no information "whether a complete and correct maintenance" of the machines and printers has been done because this information should be with the Central Election Commission (CEC).

"From the very beginning of the preparation we tried to make a clear distinction between the responsibilities of the executive and the responsibilities of the CEC. Elections are conducted by the CEC, which adopts all the acts, methodology and control of the process. The executive does not have and should not have any functions regarding the electoral process, as this is dangerous for democracy," Karadimov said.

The Innovation and Growth Minister, who is in charge of coordination functions, pointed out that if there were violations, they were related to the activities of the Sectional Election Commissions.

Filling in of protocol, not counting ballots in protocol are activities of the Sectional Election Commissions. The executive has no authority, and should not have any, over the activities of Sectional Election Commissions, Karadimov said.

"The experts of the executive  who were assisting the CEC, were at times helpless before the arbitrary actions of two private companies," he added. "I will be a little more direct. As a Bulgarian, witnessing the electoral process from the inside, I could not believe that the most sacred sovereignty of a State, which is the electoral process, is entrusted to two private companies - one that stores the machines and the other that ensures the operation of the respective machines," Karadimov said.

Earlier on Monday, Deputy Chair of the Central Election Commission Rositsa Mateva said that in 63 voting sections there was no live video streaming and recording of the parliamentary elections on October 27.