site.btaCEC Has Proposed Development of New Machine Voting Software, Institutions Have Not Responded – CEC Chair Neykova

The Central Election Commission (CEC) has repeatedly proposed the development of new software for the machine voting, commissioned by the State so as to avoid foreign participation, but there has been no response from any institution, CEC Chair Kamelia Neykova commented during a parliamentary hearing about the reliability of machine voting here on Monday.   

"In order to have no foreign participation in the machine voting, the CEC has repeatedly, including in the reports on the holding of the elections, proposed the development of new software, commissioned by the Bulgarian State, so that the interference of foreign companies or persons in this process could be completely eliminated. To date, the CEC has not received a response to this question from any institution. Our last proposal was made to the Council of Ministers immediately after its formation," said Kamelia Neykova.

She added that with the voting software acquired in early 2021 under a contract, no technical decision could be made without the involvement of the software's creator, Smartmatic International Holding.   

In her words, for this reason, the CEC has approached the software creator to be a direct partner of Bulgaria, but "once again we have been refused".

"In an effort to ensure fair elections, CEC has repeatedly attempted to engage the bodies that are tasked with this country's security to come with both expertise and security measures regarding the voting machine and the electoral process in general. Unfortunately, the answer the CEC received was that they are not assigned such powers under the Election Code's Article 18," Neykova said.