site.btaUPDATED Е-Government Minister Says Security of Voting Guaranteed for Oct. 29 Elections

The security of voting in the October 29 local elections is guaranteed, e-Government Minister Alexander Yolovski said here Friday. "The voting machines work like printers: they will print out a receipt which shows every vote," he said.

He said that Deputy Prime Minister Mariya Gabriel and himself will participate in an emergency meeting of Parliament's presiding body, including the Parliament Chair and his deputies, and the floor leaders of the parties. 

Earlier on Friday, There Is Such a People said that a Deputy e-Government Minister affiliated with Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria, "has downloaded" the voting machine codes. 

The Minister went on to explain the procedure for machine verification. Here is what he said:

According to the Elections Code, the Electronic Governance Ministry ensures the certification of technical compliance of the voting machines with the legal requirements. The second task that the Ministry performs in connection with the elections is to ensure video surveillance after the end of polling day. What has happened so far is that on 9 October, the serial numbers of the voting machines that will undergo a compliance check in this year's procedure were drawn at random by lot using a software generator. The numbers of eight machines were drawn, up from four machines in the previous elections. The drawing of the serial numbers was attended by representatives of the Bulgarian Institute for Standardization, the Bulgarian Institute of Metrology, representatives of the political parties as well as journalists.

On 19 October, the methodology for the compliance check was approved. On 20 October, experts of the Central Election Commission (CEC), in the presence of a representative of Ciela Norma, carried out the software installation in a controlled environment. 

Representatives of four parliamentary parties were present during the process. As part of this process, a cryptographic key was generated - the so-called hash code - that is used to sign the software. No other software that is not signed with this key can go on the voting machines. 

The software itself is locked with a key that is generated with the passwords of three CEC members who are from the quotas of different parties. The key is kept at CEC, on a laptop, in the cashier's office. The passwords of the three members were entered on the spot, immediately after the completion of the software instalation, personally by each of them. This ensured that no arbitrary software could be put on the voting machines to alter the results.

The software has been installed on all machines and the devices have already been distributed to the polling stations for 29 October. After the hash code generation, it was publicly shown to the press and is currently public. On October 23, in the presence of Ciela Norma representatives, representatives of the registered parties and coalitions were given full access to the source code of the voting machine software in a secure environment. The heads of the teams from the certifying institutions presented to the representatives of the parties their main conclusions from their work so far on the process of machine authentication. The attendees received answers to the questions raised concerning the software. After the end of the procedure, all media used for the code review were duly destroyed. The process of verifying the conformity of the  voting machines with the legal requirements has no impact on the election process.

By my order of September 19, given in a view of the qualification and professional skills of my deputy, Mihail Stoynov, within the month of September, I have authorized him to exercise all the rights, duties and powers of the Electronic Governance Minister in relation to the verification of the voting machines.