site.btae-Government Ministry Presents Voting Machines Certification Process to International Observers

Caretaker Deputy e-Government Minister Blagovest Kirilov held a working meeting with representatives of the observation mission of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the e-Government Ministry said in a press release on Friday.

The meeting discussed the certification process of voting machines for the October 2 parliamentary elections and presented a detailed analysis on the various technical parameters of the machines.

"The e-Government Ministry is doing everything in its power to ensure confidence in machine voting and to certify that the software will perform its functions properly and cannot be manipulated," Kirilov said.

Kirilov explained in detail the responsibilities of the three state institutions involved in the process – the e-Government Ministry, the Bulgarian Institute of Metrology, and the Bulgarian Institute for Standardization.

"As for the accessibility to the source code of the machines, which has been demanded by some political parties, we are ready to provide the technical means for this to happen, but we are waiting for the decision of the Central Election Commission," he added.

At the end of the meeting, the international observers were invited to take part in all stages of the certification process, as well as in an upcoming demonstration on the disassembly of a randomly selected voting machine. The demonstration will be held in public - in the presence of journalists, representatives of political parties and non-governmental organizations.