A voter in Sofia's District 24 cast three votes on a machine on election day after it showed an error. All three votes were counted, and the breach has been sent to prosecutors, said Yordan Topalov, chair of the 24th Regional Election Commission (RIK).
The chair of the polling station commission asked to stay anonymous. She says the problem was technical and came from the machine. After the error, the commission called a technician, who cancelled the vote twice. Only then did the commission call the RIK, which told it that it had acted wrongly.
Topalov gives a different account. The machine was working, he said, but the first slip was crumpled and the second could not be read, so it kept printing until one was legible. He says the polling station chair approved and allowed the breach, which is an offence under the Criminal Code.
The chair says the instructions contradicted each other. Some said a second attempt is not allowed and the vote is lost. Others, given to 24 SIK "Poduyane", said it is allowed and only the third counts. She says training stressed that there is only one attempt and that no new one is allowed if a vote is not counted, but this is not written down anywhere in black and white.
She believes the commission did all it could to prevent fraud by calling a technician. She accepts that its lapse was not calling the RIK first.
There were other violations on election day, including broken machines. The Central Election Commission (CIK) has not yet responded.
In a second case in the same district, a machine counted 12 votes at the interim count, but the voter list had 17 signatures. The slips were 3 blank and 14 valid, making 17 votes.
Topalov called the gap inexplicable and said no one knows how many people voted in vain. Asked whether this casts doubt on the vote, he said no.