site.btaElection Commission Says Tally Sheets Cannot Be Corrected on Basis of Video Footage

Central Election Commission (CEC) Spokesperson Rositsa Mateva said tally sheets cannot be corrected on the basis of video footage taken during the ballot count after the October 27 snap parliamentary elections. Interviewed by the Bulgarian National Television (BNT) on Friday, she commented on errors in the tally sheets filled in by the section election commissions.

The law does not allow the constituency election commissions or CEC to correct errors made by the section commissions and registered by video monitoring, Mateva said. The Election Code was amended to introduce video monitoring as a transparency measure, but it should also have had a disciplining effect on the members of the section commissions, she said.

"Unfortunately, looking at the footage, I can see that they had no qualms about breaching the Election Code, and some of their actions were bordering on crime," the CEC spokesperson said.

In her words, there may be an administrative sanction, i.e. a fine, but those actions cannot form grounds for corrections of tally sheets. It is good to have observers and party agents in the section commissions to ensure fair and correct vote counting, she said.

Mateva also commented that after video monitoring was introduced in late 2022, only local elections have been challenged using footage as evidence. In one case, administrative courts demanded video footage and took it into account. A second vote count can be done in such a case.

Commenting on a BNT story which showed that some section commissions recorded votes cast for Velichie as votes for other parties listed on the lines above or below that party, Mateva said this should not erode confidence.

Velichie won 3.999% of the vote and fell short of the 4% electoral threshold.

Suspected violations can be referred to the Constitutional Court by one fifth of the 240 MPs, or by the President, the Council of Ministers, the Supreme Court of Cassation, the Supreme Administrative Court or the Prosecutor General, Mateva said.