site.btaCourt-Appointed Expert Kalinov: Missing 780 Votes to Cause Shifts within Parties, Regions

Krasimir Kalinov, an expert appointed by the Constitutional Court, said on Wednesday that he expects internal shifts based on the 780 missing votes that have become public, which will lead to a degree of reshuffling.

Kalinov is among the team of experts appointed by the Constitutional Court to determine the valid and invalid votes in some of the sections during the recent parliamentary elections.

"My expectation is that the reshuffling will happen within the parties and by regions – someone will probably leave this parliament, and someone else from the same party will come," he explained.

During a hearing of experts earlier in the day in Parliament, Tsveta Rangelova (from the Vazrazhdane party) asked whether the data from the recount will lead to partial or full annulment of the election results.

"It is very difficult to answer without having all the data by party and electoral districts to know what shifts will occur," noted Prof. Kalinov. "The methodology is such that even a difference of two votes could lead to shifts within the parties and regions," he said. According to him, another major unanswered question is whether any new entity will cross the four percent threshold or not. Kalinov explained that the balance between the votes and the parties, and between valid and invalid votes, is important, but it is not entirely clear at this moment.

Toshko Yordanov (There Is Such a People) asked the experts who told them to write zero instead of trying to request and find the missing ballots.

"I think there's some speculation here," responded Prof. Kalinov. "The CC's ruling clearly and categorically states what our task was. When you are assigned to check the match between the contents of the ballot box and the tally sheet, and there’s nothing in the box, you write zero," he pointed out. Prof. Kalinov added that the experts strictly followed the CC's ruling and the provisions of the Election Code.

Hamid Hamid from MRF - New Beginning asked the experts if anyone had pressured or influenced them to write zeros instead of stating that the ballots were not found.

Alexander Andreev stated that there had been no influence. "In our expertise, we indicated what we found, and here, the ballots from both electronic and paper voting are the evidence of the voting," he said. Andreev mentioned that, together with Prof. Kalinov, they had checked 141 sections.