site.btaCC-DB’s Bozhanov: There Is Targeted Effort to Remove Voting Machines

"We can see that concerted efforts to sabotage trust in the elections have begun, to make people doubt that their vote will be counted," said Continue the Change–Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) Deputy Floor Leader Bozhidar Bozhanov in response to a declaration by There Is Such a People (TISP) on Wednesday.

On behalf of TISP, deputy parliamentary group leader Stanislav Balabanov asked in a declaration in parliament that every single voting machine is checked before the April 19 parliamentary elections.

"Mr Balabanov was acting as a servant of MRF-New Beginning and GERB," the CC-DB deputy leader said.

“This kind of coordination is not new, especially when it comes to trust in the elections and attempts to undermine it,” he added.

Of the Ministry of Electronic Governance, Bozhanov said: "In the political cabinet of the minister, there are only people who have been involved with electronic governance long before Stanislav Balabanov even started going around with a microphone, even before I entered politics, and even before I dealt with electronic governance."

"If we start to look for conspirationя, the same people in the political cabinet were directors of departments in the State Agency for Electronic Governance when Rosen Zhelyazkov was the chair," he commented.

He added: "Georgi Sharkov was not appointed by me or anyone from our group, this is the choice and decision of caretaker Prime Minister Gyurov." Bozhanov noted that Sharkov was the first national coordinator for cybersecurity, appointed during the second Borissov cabinet by Boyko Borissov.

"If there is really something wrong happening with the machines, with voter authentication, or with the electoral process, come forward and say it," he urged.

"The machines cannot be hacked, and moreover, the machines are essentially printers. In 2022, they were converted into such, and they remain so to this day, with the results still counted by humans," Bozhanov noted.

"All this attack on the machines, however, has a single goal - to remove the machines. You tried to make it so that Bulgarian citizens could vote only on paper. But that will not happen," he said.