Bulgaria’s Central Election Commission (CEC) tabled a report to the country’s National Assembly recommending that MPs postpone the introduction of electronic voting, which currently is slated to be used for the first time in the European Parliament elections in May 2019. Although CEC did not make its report public, several media reports said that CEC made its recommendation based on several simulations of electronic voting.
Public broadcaster Bulgarian National Radio said that CEC concluded that even though electronic voting was more convenient to voters, it also held heightened risks – that the voter was not alone when exercising the franchise, that someone else was voting instead of them, or that the electoral databases could become the target of hacking attempts.
Furthermore, the lack of an electronic identification system created an additional obstacle in the way of introducing electronic voting. Bulgaria plans to introduce such a system, which would be incorporated in national ID cards, but a tender to pick a contractor was later cancelled and a new tender is yet to be called, news site Mediapool reported.
Full Article: Bulgaria electoral authority to ask MPs to defer introduction of electronic voting | The Sofia Globe.