As voting day unfolded, there were various controversies in Bulgaria’s October 25 2015 municipal elections and national referendum on whether to introduce online voting. After many complaints, the Central Election Commission said that it had instrructed polling stations to issue voters with ballots for the referendum as well as for the local elections. Posts on social networks and media reports said that there were cases where voters were either not given ballot papers for the referendum or were asked whether or not they wanted one. Another major concern was a delay in announcing up-to-date figures on voter turnout, which according to the Central Election Commission was because of its website being brought down by the weight of traffic as municipal election commissions reported these figures.
The problem is unprecedented in comparison with all elections in recent years, in which updates on voter turnout were given by the commission every few hours while polling stations were open.
The commission said that it believed that it was heavy traffic, and not a hacking attack, that was behind its website going offline or otherwise malfunctioning. However, a separate Bulgarian-language report said that other official websites, including that of the Interior Ministry, also had been offline for some time on the morning of October 25, which it quoted its own sources as attributing to hacker attacks.
Full Article: Controversies in Bulgaria’s 2015 local elections, referendum | The Sofia Globe.