It cannot be said that the Constitutional Court has slapped anyone. The Constitutional Court has not slapped the Central Election Commission (CEC), but has assigned it to enter the data from the experts' adopted conclusions and see what the overall picture will show. And whether this will lead to a change in the election result, provided that there are discrepancies in the election results. From now on, it remains to be seen what the result will be and the Constitutional Court will have to rule on the five complaints for partial cancellation of early parliamentary elections. This was stated by the former chairman of the Central Election Commission (CEC) Alexander Andreev in the program "Nedelya 150" on the Bulgarian National Radio, quoted by news.bg.
Andreev explained that it cannot be said that the discrepancies in the ballots are too numerous, but where there were any, they were reflected in order to take them into account and assess their impact on the final election result. Alexander Andreev specified that he had checked polling stations in Sofia - in 23 MIRs, and with regard to the remaining polling stations, that there were missing materials, he could not comment on the argument that they were checked by other people.
According to Andreev, the CEC must organize its work as quickly as possible in order to be able to return the calculations to the Constitutional Court as quickly as possible. The court's ruling on the complaints for partial cancellation of the early elections is not the final act of the Constitutional Court. With the ruling on the proceedings, the Constitutional Court sent the data in paper and electronic format to see what the introduction of the new data by the experts would lead to, the former CEC chairman pointed out.
Andreev noted that in cases where there are changes in reporting the results in a certain part of the polling stations, it is due to the incorrect reporting of valid and invalid votes. In machine voting, there can be no invalid votes, he pointed out.
Stefan Manov from the Public Council to the CEC reminded that this array of 2,200 polling stations, which were designated for expertise by the Constitutional Court, is thanks solely to new technologies - machine voting and video surveillance. The Constitutional Court relied on the discrepancies found between the records in the so-called flash drives and the counting of ballots from machine voting. In addition to this huge array of differences in assessments of the Public Council to the CEC - the Constitutional Court selected 2200 and, in addition to this chance that machine voting gives to track what is happening at the moment of counting the receipts, other polling stations found in the paper ballots also entered these sections, Manov explained.
According to him, the technology provides a new perspective on the electoral process with missing ballot bags. "There are explanations from the respective mayors in the case files. There is a problem with the transparency of work with the cancellation of the elections", Stefan Manov pointed out.
The conclusions of the Public Council to the CEC after the early parliamentary elections and the ruling of the Constitutional Court, Manov pointed out that the constitutional case will be important for the selection of new technologies that will be fixed in the Electoral Code. Many interesting things are noticed in the Constitutional Court case, as it is evident that there are extremely many cases of errors caused by the human factor - even incorrectly counted ballots from machine voting. On the other hand, it is very interesting that the Constitutional Court requires an examination of the logs of several machines in order to see the frequency of voting, as it turns out that the frequency of voting is incompatible with a normal electoral process. The machine can also protect voters from their own voluntary or involuntary errors, Stefan Manov highlighted.
It is interesting to note whether the Constitutional Court will consider that there is a significant violation in the sections where it was not included. Stefan Manov also said that the human factor in the electoral process must be limited and eliminated.