E-Governance Minister: We are opening a procedure for certification of the voting machines for the second round of voting in the minicipal elections on Sunday

A procedure is being launched to guarantee Bulgarian citizens the possibility to vote by machine in the second round of local elections, Electronic Governance Minister Alexander Yolovski said on October 31 after the Supreme Administrative Court decided on Monday that "certifying the compliance of the voting machines with Article 213a, paragraph 2 of the Electoral Code is the explicit competence of the Minister of e-Governance and cannot be delegated to any of his subordinate authorities - in this case a Deputy Minister."

The certification teams of the Ministry of e-Governance will work extra hours and will repeat the certification procedures already carried out, which were signed in time before the first round of the local elections by the Deputy Minister in charge of the process, Mihail Stoynov. At the end of the new procedure, in order to avoid any risk of a repeat cancellation of the machine voting, the Minister of e-Governance, Alexander Yolovski, will put his signature.

Each step of the new procedure will be documented and the Ministry will ask the Central Election Commission to allow full transparency of all steps of the certification process, which are to be performed by the Ministry, the statement further says.

The Electronic Governance Minister invited representatives of the State Agency for National Security, the parties, coalitions and nominating committees, NGOs, registered observers and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences to observe each step of the process. They will receive the entire information according to the procedure set out by the Central Election Commission.