site.btaCentral Election Commission: 43 Voting Sections Failed to Live-Stream Vote Counting in Oct. 27 Elections

Forty-three voting sections failed to live-stream the vote counting in the October 27 snap parliamentary elections. "We found discrepancies in the figures of the number of polling stations where there was no video streaming, so we requested a report with more information. It showed that there were 43 polling stations where there was no live broadcast for the October 27 snap elections," Central Election Commission (CEC) Deputy Chairperson and Spokesperson Rositsa Mateva said during Tuesday's commission meeting. She was referring to data from Information Service.

Among those 43 polling stations where there was no video broadcasting, seven were in Blagoevgrad, twenty - in Kardzhali, three - in Sofia region, one each in Plovdiv and Pazardzhik. Letters have been prepared to all Regional Election Commissions (RECs) with prescriptions, Mateva said. Faults have been found in five devices, there are four sections where the devices gave an error, and in five sections the device was switched on before 8:00 pm, and the records have been reviewed.

The CEC spokesperson explained that in four polling stations the video broadcasting device was not switched on because it was not marked that these polling stations were in hospitals or nursing homes where by law there should be no video broadcasting.

CEC decided that for the polling stations where there was no video recording, the information should be sent to the relevant RECs with instructions to collect the necessary information by the end of this week and to draw up acts of violation against the chairmen of the polling station commissions for which, according to the data from Information Service, there was no recording of the counting of the ballot papers and the completion of the tally sheets.

On Monday, caretaker Minister of E-Government Valentin Mundrov said that in more than 98% of the polling stations there was a live broadcast from the video surveillance during the counting of ballots in the polling stations. There were live broadcasts in 11,400 polling stations, out of a total of 11,626 polling stations. Caretaker Minister of Innovation and Growth Rosen Karadimov said that over 99.5% of polling stations in the country were covered by CCTV.