site.btaVazrazhdane Leader Calls on Citizens to Join Wednesday Protest over Suspected Election Fraud by GERB, MRF

Talking to journalists on Wednesday, Vazrazhdane leader Kostadin Kostadinov called on citizens to join a protest on Wednesday evening over suspicions of election fraud to be committed by GERB and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF). In his words, the draft amendments to the Election Code that these two parties have tabled in Parliament are "nothing less than large-scale election fraud".

The draft revisions, which concern machine voting, will be discussed at a meeting of the parliamentary Legal Affairs Committee later on Wednesday. 

According to Kostadinov, the revisions eliminate the human factor entirely, reducing the role of election commissions at polling stations solely to copying the protocol generated by scanning machines. If the revisions are adopted, Information Services Executive Director Ivaylo Filipov will decide the election result with the push of a button, as both the software and the voting machines will now go to Information Services. 

The proposal of the Vazrazhdane party is to have machines that are controlled by the election commission, which would check and count the ballots and compare them with the data from the voting machine's protocol. According to Kostadinov, this way the machine and the people in the commission will control each other, and this is the surest way to ensure the integrity of the electoral process.