site.btaInformation Services Given until Wednesday to Recalculate Oct. 2024 Election Data, Prosecutors Looking into Missing Ballots

The Central Election Commission (CEC) said Tuesday that it has given election services provider Information Services until 9 a.m. on Wednesday to recalculate the results from the October 2024 parliamentary elections. The initial deadline was Monday, but a new one had to be set after Information Services provided all relevant paperwork to the prosecuting magistracy on March 10. 

CEC Deputy Chair Tsvetozar Tomov said that late on Monday, they received a message from Information Services CEO Ivaylo Filipov asking for the election protocols and informing the election administration that they would be installing a new server by Tuesday noon after which they will start doing the recalculation.

The CEC also decided "to provide Information Services with the election protocols in paper format, as it received them from the Constitutional Court, along with the two electronic storage devices, for the re-entry of data and the provision of information, in accordance with the court's ruling of February 26."

The Constitutional Court has been approached by several parties challenging the lawfulness of the elections. As part of the case it opened in November 2024, the Court hired experts to do a new count of the ballots in some 2,204 polling stations and once the recount was done, on February 26 the Court instructed the Central Election Commission to recalculate the results. On March 4, the CEC asked election services operator Information Services to do the recalculation by March 10. 

On Tuesday, Information Services, Bulgaria’s national system integrator, came up with a statement saying that on March 10, in response to a request based on a prosecutors’ act, the Sofia City Prosecution Office (SCPO) requested all materials related to the computer processing and data entry of the protocols concerning the election results’ recalculation. Those materials had been sent by the Constitutional Court through the CEC.

Information Services stated that they did not provide SCPO with the protocols sent by the Constitutional Court or any copies of them. "The company returned all original documents received from the CEC, which had been provided by the Constitutional Court. Information Services does not possess copies or originals of these protocols. The company fully cooperates with all competent state institutions regarding Constitutional Case 33/2024," Information Services’ statement further reads.

The Information Services team emphasized the company’s crucial role in processing election results. They recalled that, according to the Election Code, "the CEC publishes the scanned protocols before announcing the final results, as well as open data in a machine-readable format for all elections since 2003. This allows election participants and external experts to analyze and verify the data, ensuring full transparency and accuracy of the final results," the company explained.

Constitutional Court President Pavlina Panova commented, interviewed by Bulgarian National Radio on Tuesday, that one wonders why Information Services has been unable to recalculate the data from just 2,204 polling stations in seven days, given that election service operator can process the data from more than 12,000 polling stations in less than 72 hours after election day. 

Asked which institutions are sabotaging the Constitutional Court, Panova said the only institution communicating with the Constitutional Court is the Central Election Commission. The Central Election Commission has relegated the calculations to the Information Services company. The sabotage is taking place somewhere along the chain, she commented.  In her words, the Constitutional Court and the Central Election Commission are the only authorities which can alert the prosecution service to possible evidence of offence. 

Sofia City Prosecution Office looking into missing ballots

The prosecution service said on Tuesday that the Sofia City Prosecution Office is conducting a check in connection with information that ballots are missing from the October 2024 elections. The prosecutors’ case file was instituted on March 7, acting on an alert from Information Services. The State Agency for National Security has been assigned to conduct a check, the press release reads.

In this relation, the SCPO Tuesday sent a request to the Constitutional Court, signed by prosecutor Violeta Marcheva, to provide a number of documents in connection with the elections case: the petitions filed by political parties challenging the results of the latest parliamentary elections and the Court’s decisions and reasoning for initiating the constitutional case. The prosecution office further requested the rules that the experts followed, inter alia in determining which ballots are valid and which are invalid and the criteria under which their work is approbated.

The SCPO requested the rules under which the CEC and the municipal administrations were required to submit the balloting materials, including specimens of the takeover records and of the statements of facts.

The letter also requested the Constitutional Court to name the member or members of the Court or the experts who determined which election stationery would be presented to the experts as a basis for their findings and the letters by which the balloting materials that were required from the CEC and the municipal administrations.

The prosecution service required all takeover records and statements of facts under which the balloting materials had been received. The letter further required reports and transcripts of meetings evidencing the outcome of the experts’ work, whether they were issued any specifications on implementing uniform procedures, why forensic experts were recruited, the rules on their work, and the forensics’ expertise.

In its reply to the SCPO, the Constitutional Court said that in a constitutional case that is not yet disposed of, the Court is not bound to provide the documents specified by the prosecution office. The reply was published on the Court’s website on Tuesday.  “The Constitutional Court is a body independent of the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government and is guided only by the provisions of the Constitution and of the Constitutional Court Act. The activity of the Court is also regulated in the Regulations on the Organization of the Activities of the Constitutional Court. In accordance with these rules, until the Court has ruled, the information on constitutional cases that is subject to publication is made public on the website of the Constitutional Court,” the reply to the SCPO reads.

Also on Tuesday, the SCPO sent a letter to the CEC requesting sundry documents including CEC’s correspondence with the Constitutional Court in connection with the elections, copies of letters from the Constitutional Court, takeover records, statements of facts on unsealing balloting materials from municipal administrations and takeover records received from the Constitutional Court. 

On a proposal by CEC Deputy Chair Rositsa Mateva, the Commission decided to submit the full set of its correspondence with the Constitutional Court related to the task assigned to the CEC by the Court: arrangements for delivery of the balloting materials by the regional administrations to the municipal administrations, as described in the Court’s ruling, information on the letters delivered from the CEC to the municipal and regional administrations, a copy of the takeover records, a copy of the documents whereby the municipal administrations notified the CEC of the opening of the premises where the materials were stored, and a copy of the statements.

Mateva explained that the Commission’s administration has started preparing the documents for submission to the prosecution service which, at this point, comprise some eight folders.

As proposed by the prosecution service, the CEC will send the SCPO the part of the information which is already prepared and will send additionally the rest of the documents when ready.