site.btaUPDATED Information Services Will Meet Wednesday Deadline for Recalculating Votes

The CEO of election service provider Information Service, Ivaylo Filipov, said during a parliamentary hearing Tuesday that they will meet a Wednesday morning deadline for recalculating the results of the October 2024 parliamentary elections, as instructed by the Central Election Commission. It also transpired from Filipov's remarks that all parties in Parliament stand to lose votes after a recount of experts in over 2,000 polling stations.

During the hearing, the MPs will question the leadership of the Central Election Commission and Information Services, as it is trying to see who did what regarding a constitutional case on the lawfulness of the October 2024 elections.

The Constitutional Court has been approached by several parties challenging the lawfulness of the elections. As part of the case it opened, the Court hired experts to do a new count of the ballots in 2,204 polling stations and once the recount was done, it instructed the Central Election Commission to recalculate the results. CEC, in turn, asked election services operator Information Services to do the recalculation. On March 10, Information Services said that all relevant paperwork had been provided to the prosecuting magistracy. In an unprecedented statement, the Court said that providing the election papers to the prosecuting magistracy without its permission hinders its efforts to conclude the case challenging the election results. 

Filipov said that the progress they have made with inputting the recounted voted gives them reason to believe that they will be done by Wednesday morning.

He made a point to mention seven "problem voting sections". "For two of these sections, the Constitutional Court’s experts [who did the vote recount] put down zero votes for all political parties and candidates, despite votes being cast both by machine and on paper. In one section, all voting by paper ballots was scrapped, effectively reducing the count to zero, while in four others, all machine votes were eliminated." Filipov pointed out that video surveillance clearly shows both machine and paper ballots in the transparent ballot boxes in these seven voting sections.

"The total number of votes that disappeared for all political parties, is 780, including 739 for the parliamentary parties and Velichie" [which was 21 votes short of making it into Parliament], said the Information Services CEO. 

He went on to offer a breakdown of the "disappeared votes" by party. Of those, MRF - New Beginning has 242, GERB-UDF 134, Vazrazhdane 103, Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria 92, BSP - United Left 55, There Is Such a People 35, MECh 33,  Alliance for Rights and Freedoms (later transformed into Democracy, Rights and Freedoms) 13 and Velichie 32.

Filipov explained that as these 780 votes are scrapped from the valid votes, the 4-percent barrier will drop by 31 votes.

He showed a table where the numbers are now being entered: a blue column with the votes from the elections on October 27, 2024, and a green column with the figures provided by the Constitutional Court’s experts. He noted that, for the first time, Information Services is calculating election results "in the dark: without public transparency in the process or access to source materials, without the protocols being published online, and without all participating political parties having access to the data before it reaches Information Services". Filipov added that the Constitutional Court refused to take additional steps to secure the ballots in these seven polling stations.

"The report to the prosecution was filed by me," Filipov stated. "We have submitted all the materials as requested by the prosecution, as a matter of urgency," he added.

When asked why there is no public access to the figures being re-entered, the chair of the Central Election Commission responded that on March 7 the Constitutional Court told them it did not permit the publication of the protocols in tabular format, as provided to the CEC, until the Court issues a ruling on the constitutional case. For this reason, the CEC could not make this information public, she added.

Also, Filipov said that he was the one who sent the tipoff about the case to the prosecution service. 

Asked why he did so, he said he "could not sit back and do nothing in a situation that can torpedo the election process" and the work of Information Services.