site.btaCentral Election Commission Hopes to Be Ready with Recalculation of Election Results by Next Week’s End

The Central Election Commission (CEC) hopes to be ready with a recalculation of the results of the October 2024 parliamentary elections and submit them to the Constitutional Court as instructed, CEC Deputy Chair Rositsa Mateva said on Bulgarian National Television Friday. 

On October 26, the Constitutional Court tasked CEC with recalculating the results of the elections. The ruling was prompted by applications of several parties contesting the election outcome. The next day, CEC decided that it would instruct election service operator Information Services with the recalculation. 

Mateva said that they will do the setup Friday : computers will be installed at CEC, and teams have been assigned to enter the information from the protocols twice, in order to prevent errors. “We will be extra careful. After that, the data will be entered into the CEC database. We hope that the calculations will be completed by the end of next week, as the process is quite time-consuming, and the results will be submitted to the Constitutional Court,” explained Mateva.

The CEC will not count ballots or review election documents and materials.

"We will send the information to the Constitutional Court, and it will issue a decision. The CEC will not make any decisions based on the results of this data entry and calculation process," Mateva stated.

She said some discrepancies have been found with invalid ballots: while the protocol states there are 13 invalid ballots, the expert found 11. “A few ballots were found among the invalid ones, which the expert deemed valid. From what we have seen, I cannot in any way say that these were manipulations," said the CEC Deputy Chair.

According to Mateva, no one can say at this moment whether there will be a recalculation of mandates, and any claims regarding this matter are mere speculation.

She added that errors did not affect only the Velichie party. This party received 3.999% of the votes and was very few votes away from making it into Parliament.