Will there be a rearrangement of political forces in the parliament after the final results of the recount in 2204 sections are announced. Who has what responsibility and how is it shared between the Constitutional Court, the CEC and “Information Service… Tsvetelina Peneva, member of the Public Council of the CEC, spoke to FACTI.
- Ms. Peneva, the Constitutional Court, the prosecutor's office, the CEC and “Information Service“ definitely created chaos with the transfer of responsibility regarding the recount of ballots in 2204 sections. Could this have been avoided?
- If we start talking about who is to blame for the situation that arose during the recount of the ballots, perhaps we should ask ourselves whether the Constitutional Court should have given and distributed the tasks of the experts in this way. We know that the recount of the ballots was distributed to two groups of experts. One was to analyze only valid ballots, that is, this is a partial audit of the election papers in over 1,700 sections. The second group of tasks was aimed at auditing only invalid ballots. This is a partial approach that the Constitutional Court adopted at the very beginning when structuring constitutional case No. 33 and the tasks for the experts. In general, all this was a prerequisite for the things that we witnessed later to be obtained. I am also referring to 11 sections that turned out to be counted by both experts from group one and experts from group two. From another perspective, regarding the missing ballots in the bags, it is good to clarify things. It is only one bag out of all those that are the subject of the expertise that was not found. It is a bag from the Stara Zagora electoral district. In the remaining five sections that are mentioned as missing ballots, we should note that there are ballots found, but not all ballots. In these five sections there are found - in four of them the ballots from the machines are missing, and in one of them the opposite is true - the paper ballots are missing.
- Is there a discrepancy between the protocols that are described and the contents of the bags?
- Yes, the contents of the bags were not what was described in the election protocol. And here it is perhaps a place to remind that at the end of election day, after the work is completed and the protocol is filled out, the ballots should be packed, wrapped in paper and placed in a special bag, and then, of course, the bag is sealed. It is the sealed bags that are the obligation of municipal administrations and mayors of settlements to keep until the next elections of the same type.
- Still, if the information from “Information Service“ about the missing 780 votes is to be believed, there will be a rearrangement of the parties in parliament. Is the goal to delay the process?
- Some tables have appeared in the public domain, which may have some degree of credibility. But we do not know what the Constitutional Court will decide. We just have to wait a little longer. We saw last week and witnessed unprecedented pressure being exerted on the judges of the Constitutional Court. We saw how the prosecutor's office got involved, how it got involved with questions that are, to put it mildly, strange. Like, for example, what is the motive for the opening of case No. 33, after all the materials and constitutional complaints were published on the Constitutional Court's website last year. So what is the prosecutor's office asking? Why are they asking this? And isn't this a way to exert pressure, because a decision needs to be made.
- We see that the members of the section committees in the places are a problem, because that's where the big “corrections“ for Kiro, Gosho, etc. are made. Are the counting centers that are being launched a solution to the problem?
- Whether the counting centers will be a solution to the problem is a matter for future discussion, which should be held both between political parties and after a public discussion with the help of experts. By the way, a working group was established yesterday at the Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs in the National Assembly, which will consider proposals for changes to the Electoral Code, one of which is related to the counting centers in question. Let's say about them that there is such experience in the history of the electoral process in Bulgaria. Only once has the municipality of Boboshevo counted in such a counting center. The results so far and what the Public Council has written in its analyses are that before accepting the option of reporting the results through counting centers, this should be subjected to an experimental test in the next elections.
- You want some kind of database to be created so that there can be a basis for comparison later…
- Yes. And then, based on the results we receive, to then come to implementation. If the counting centers are created in the same way that the Section Election Commissions are structured now, if they include members who are not sufficiently trained by the CEC, as there are currently untrained members of the SEC, what will change in terms of the credibility of the results. From what we see now, and if we think about it, video surveillance has shown us the deficiencies in the work of the section commissions during the counting of ballots and how the election results are handled. Now, through this re-counting of a small part of the sections, the deficiency in the ability of the section commissions to handle the election papers, to fill out the protocols and to prove their commitment to the result for truthfully reflecting the people's votes has been shown to an even greater extent. This recount is yet another slap in the face to our electoral system. But here we can look for deficiencies not only in the people in the sectional commissions, but we should perhaps also ask ourselves the question of what the Central Election Commission did to be able to train these people. Did it create a training unit!?
What did the political parties do, sending their untrained candidates as members of the SIC.
We are talking about the same parties that created so much noise in parliament yesterday, and the same ones that will most likely hear the experts in constitutional case No. 33 today. I have a hard time imagining what the politicians will want from these experts and how they can hold them accountable for writing zeros in their expert reports given that the expert received an empty bag and established this. Otherwise, what will the Constitutional Court decide… This is a topic for another conversation. Just as the Constitutional Court may comply with the expert report it has commissioned and leave the results in the sections with missing ballots unchanged, it may also make another decision. We shall see.