Literally on the eve of the day for reflection before the “2 in 1” elections, ITN, GERB and CEC plunged us into a new drama about the machine vote. At the epicenter of the scandal is the CEC’s order to mayors and regional governors to destroy unused rolls of machine voting paper left over from last year’s parliamentary and local elections. The capital municipality refused to do so, as there is still a court case for the vote in Sofia from October 2023, brought by second-placed Vanya Grigorova.
It was from here that all sorts of things started free interpretations, that the rolls can be used, for example to print machine voting receipts with them and to manipulate the election result. The former Minister of e-Government and current candidate-deputy from PP-DB Bozhidar Bojanov listed at least 5 reasonswhich show why these claims are kerfishek and another active event.
5 reasons why manipulation is impossible
First, there is no way someone could bring in some paper receipts and secretly push them into the ballot boxeswithout the sectional commission seeing it, Bojanov points out.
Second, the Electoral Code implicitly says that for each election the protections of the paper must be different, (because the decision of the CEC with the designated protections is published after the election day, i.e. they are clear for the paper of past elections). I.e. at the moment no one knows what protection the paper has except the CEC and that will become clear only after the elections.
And one obvious reason – the old paper on the back says 2023. I.e. it is impossible to use such paper for manipulations, adds Bojanov.
fourth, machine receipts have a QR code that contains the voter’s vote, protected by a machine key that no one has. It cannot be manipulated and this is verifiable through the machine itself, to which a reader can be connected afterwards, adds Bojanov.
And fifth, if such manipulations could be done, the destruction of the rolls should have taken place immediately after the local elections. Otherwise, 265 municipalities have had these rolls for months.
The hashcode guaranteeing the machines’ health has been in the clear for weeks
Already on May 25 of this year the state generates the code through which on the day of the vote – on June 9, every citizen will be able to make sure that the machines are in order and their software has not been manipulated. This happened after the then Ministry of Electronic Government (MEG) and the Bulgarian Institute of Metrology (BIM) and the Bulgarian Institute for Standardization certified the machines.
It was the late authentication of the machines in the local elections in 2023 that was used as an argument in an active campaign to cancel the machine vote.
The generated code known as hash code is 4F 0B E0 3E E8 44 FD CF 48 9D 56 D7 BC 7C 49 6B 1B E0 9D A7 17 D1 6C 4C 3D 95 DB BE 24 F1 D4 71.
Photo: Ministry of e-Governance
It will be written on the machine inspection receipt and on each ballot. Thus, on the day of the vote, citizens can compare it and if the combination matches the one announced today, this will be a guarantee that the machines are in order. The code will also be pasted on boards at polling stations.
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