Two days before the local elections: Scandal about machine voting after a report by the State Agency for National Security (update)

Two days before the local government elections, the machine vote is compromised, the parliamentary groups of GERB-UDF, "Vazrazhdane", Movement for Rights and Freedoms , Bulgarian Socialist Party and “There is Such a People” said on October 27.

“There is Such a People” demanded the arrest of a deputy minister who had filmed the process of generating codes for the machine voting.

A report by the State Agency for National Security (SANS) has sparked a row in Parliament. According to it, the Denkov Cabinet's deputy minister for e-governance, Mihail Stoynov, had copied the outgoing codes of the voting machines.

MPs insist Central Election Commission (CEC) to cancel machine voting on Sunday.

“Vazrazhdane” leader, Kostadin Kostadinov, demanded the resignation of Denkov's government.

Earlier, the e-government minister denied there was a security breach in the machine vote.

The deputy minister filmed the process of generating codes for the machine voting. with his phone, Desislava Atanasova of GERB reported.

A meeting of the presiding body of the Parliament is currently being held at which Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Mariya Gabriel and CEC representatives are presenting information on the case.

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At noon it became clear that at an extraordinary meeting of the Parliament’s presiding body, which was attended by GERB-UDF, MRF, "Vazrazhdane" and "There is Such a People" , a report was presented by SANS, according to which the Deputy Minister of e-government Mihail Stoynov, copied the outgoing codes of the voting machines.

The news was reported by the Chairman of "There is Such a People" PG,Toshko Yordanov, to the media on the sidelines of the National Assembly, and was later confirmed by MRF Deputy Chairman Delyan Peevski.

The allegations

According to Toshko Yordanov, it is about Mihail Stoynov, deputy minister of e-government, and the case is from 25 October. According to him, SANS provided a report and security camera footage showing Stoynov recording the codes with his phone.

"We Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria” (WCC-DB) are rigging the elections, stealing machines. There is footage from security cameras. There is a SANS report sent to the Parliament, to the President and to the Council of Ministers," Toshko Yordanov said.

The same was later confirmed by Delyan Peevski of MRF, who demanded that Deputy Minister Stoynov be dismissed and that Prime Minister Denkov take responsibility for the scandal..

"There is Such a People" and Peevski said that there should be no machine voting on Sunday.

Reactions

Minister of e-government Alexander Yolovsky gave a briefing at the Council of Ministers, at which he said:

• On 9 October, four parliamentary parties were present at the generation of the serial numbers of the voting machines.
• On 20 October, three members of the CEC from the quotas of the different parties generated the codes for the machines.
• Yolovsky said that all the data carriers were destroyed after the meeting.

"No other software that is not signed with that key can go on the voting machines. Three members of the CEC from the quotas of different parties generated the code. The passwords of the three members were entered on the spot. This ensures that no arbitrary software can be put on the machines to alter the results. The machines have already been distributed to the polling stations. Once the hash code is generated, it is publicly displayed to the media. It is publicly available," the minister stressed.

"Vazrazhdane" demanded the resignation of the cabinet, and according to Kostadin Kostadinov, Prime Minister Nikolai Denkov should resign immediately because of "the breach in national security, carried out by a high-ranking official of his cabinet."

Desislava Atanasova of GERB said that a second meeting of the Parliament’s presiding body would be held at 13:00, at which Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mariay Gabriel and CEC representatives would present information on the case.

"The Speaker of Parliament has been informed by SANS that a deputy minister from the Ministry of Electronic Government was filming the process of code generation with his phone, after this process had been completed two days before," Atanasova noted.

Allegations of pressure

In a subsequent statement, Toshko Yordanov said that CEC representatives had also attended the presentation of the report, and that Deputy Minister Stoynov had gone to SANS for questioning, where he said he had been pressured by Kiril Petkov (WCC-BD) and former e-government minister Bozhidar Bozhanov to sign an information security contract with a specific company.

"The electoral process is compromised, the certification of the machines is flawed, by law the CEC has to stop them and will stop them because the certification process has not been completed. I would like to appeal to the chief prosecutor and ask him to open an investigation against Kiril Petkov and Bozhidar Bozhanov for putting pressure on a representative of the executive power , for corruption schemes."

Asked how he explains the absence of the WCC-DB from the presidential council in question, he said, "given that they are rigging elections, they have leaked the codes, they are putting pressure for money - where? Kiril Petkov and Assen Vassilev should come here? They are criminals."

This was followed by a reaction from the BSP leader Kornelia Ninova who said the scandal had confirmed their suspicions that the elections could be manipulated through the voting machines:

"We have information and suspicions that our result from the last vote was influenced precisely by the machines. When we proposed the mixed vote everybody pounced on us, you remember all the gobbledygook about the paper coalition, but time as a politician's best friend has shown that our suspicions were well founded, " Ninova said.

The response from “We Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria”

At a briefing at their headquarters, representatives of "We Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria" said that the whole scandal with the voting machines was manufactured by GERB and MRF because they know they will lose the elections.

"It all starts from some mythical report of SANS, which was signed by the deputy chairman of SANS. In a calmer environment after the elections we will have to find out through parliamentary control what this report contains," Atanas Atanasov said.

Kiril Petkov said they were not afraid of paper ballots vote:

"I expected election circus, but this exceeded all my expectations. It was all sorts - Lukoil issue, veto, 73 cents, suddenly they included the issue of codes of voting machines. We know that they are losing the elections in Sofia and we know that GERB could probably be the third political force in Sofia.

WCC-DB said that GERB and MRF invented the fake news about the manipulation of the machine vote because they are losing the elections.

How will the voting be conducted on Sunday, will voting machines be ditched?

The CEC is expected to hold an emergency meeting to decide whether to cancel the use of machine voting. At a briefing today, the commission's spokeswoman and deputy chairman, Rositsa Mateva, said that the key used to sign the machines' software is held by three CEC members, who each own a third of the password.

"Each of them dials his own code, only they know it, and this is one third of the whole password. The password is made up of three parts which are dialed by three different members of the CEC. I want to point out that we are an independent state body, even though we are appointed on the proposal of parties and coalitions."

According to Toshko Yordanov of “There is Such a People” , who earlier today said that the Sunday's vote could be secured entirely by paper ballots, as the law stipulated that there would be enough in case the machines broke down.

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Bulgaria is to hold municipal and mayoral elections on October 29, 2023 as per the decree signed by President Rumen Radev.

Bulgaria holds municipal elections every four years, with the previous local elections having been held on October 27, 2019. A second round of mayoral elections was held a week later, on November 3, in municipalities where no candidate achieved the threshold for a victory in the first-round.