The ruling majority is in favor of preserving paper ballots, BNR reported.
A working group discussion on changes to the Electoral Code, organized by the Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs in parliament, was held today. A joint bill was already adopted on the first reading, which includes the proposals of the PP, DB, "Vazrazhdane", BSP and ITN. The discussion is taking place before the second reading.
The chairwoman of the legal committee Anna Alexandrova from GERB-SDF said that the ruling majority does not want paper ballots to be abolished, because this will discourage even more people from voting, news.bg specified.
The MRF-DPS supported this, but also proposed a compromise solution. Vanya Vasileva pointed out that Ahmed Dogan's formation has made a proposal that, when the voter votes with paper, there should be a scanning device in the dark room to place the ballot in.
For her part, Alexandrova admitted that it is possible to introduce this experimentally in polling stations in the three largest cities, but reminded that the budget does not provide funds for scanning devices. She expressed the opinion that a working solution for the next elections would be to include lawyers, teachers and representatives of state institutions in each section election commission in order to avoid errors in counting the ballots.
However, this proposal was met with objection from representatives of the Central Election Commission (CEC), who reminded that even now they have difficulty finding lawyers for the 265 municipal election commissions.
Due to the lack of trained people, some of the participants in the discussion spoke out against the idea of creating regional census centers, but it was also argued that this would not be possible to establish where errors had been made if a recount were to take place.
During the discussion, there was also a proposal to increase the threshold for entering the National Assembly - from 4% to 6%, as well as to introduce an educational qualification for members of section election commissions, simplify election protocols and others.
CEC Deputy Chairman Tsvetozar Tomov warned that the bill on amendments to the Electoral Code contains "things that, if adopted, will result in absurd legislation".
Another discussion on the topic is planned for March 25.