site.bta95.27% of Polling Stations Broadcast Live Ballot Counting on Election Night

A total of 11,103 out of the 11,654 polling stations in Bulgaria's local elections broadcast live the counting of the ballot papers on election night, the Electronic Governance Ministry said on Tuesday. That constitutes 95.27% of polling stations, up by 25% from the parliamentary elections in April.

Once all video recording devices arrive at the Central Election Commission, the recordings will be downloaded and published on the evideo.bg platform, in accordance with the Penal Code's requirements. The platform registered 163,000 visits for 13 minutes each on average in the October 29-30 period.

At the busiest time, over 10,000 polling stations were broadcasting simultaneously without overloading the servers.

A video from one polling station, which went viral on Tuesday, showed the section commission members adding preferences on ballots to increase the chances of some local candidates. That was captured on video because they thought the camera had been turned off for what they said would be a 5-minute break - but it was still on. The prosecution service is investigating the case.