Ballots have begun arriving at local election offices across Bulgaria. In Burgas, the largest voting district, more than 402,000 ballot papers arrived under heavy guard.
The Central Election Commission (CEC) and the state-owned Information Services showed how vote results are processed on computers. By law, the state company does this work. In all, 150,000 people work on the election, and the head of a regional election commission is paid between €1,352 and €1,470.
The way votes are processed is changing because voting machines are now compulsory in polling stations with more than 300 voters. More than 75% of polling stations will use them.
CEC spokeswoman Stoyanka Balova said that when results are counted at the regional election commission, members of the polling station commissions go to Information Services' computing points. There, staff read the flash drives and scan the protocols.
Information Services said its systems are fully protected and a hacker break-in is not possible. Chief executive Ivaylo Filipov said the processing system at the CEC and at the regional commissions is cut off from the outside world and cannot be influenced from outside.
"What we have always built into the technology is the absolute impossibility of compromising or changing the data we process," Aleksandar Stanev of Information Services told BNT.
The count in polling stations after voting ends will be filmed and streamed with phones set up for the purpose. Video recordings from past elections run to a total of 28 years.
The CEC has removed the deputy chair of the municipal election commission in Lom after a court sentence for embezzlement came into force. The money he took belonged to a care home for adults with dementia.
The CEC will soon look at a complaint about whether the appointment of Marin Vrabchev, head of the regional election commission in Vratsa, was legal. The complaint raises doubts that he has a university degree. Plovdiv University says it has no such profile and no record that Vrabchev studied there.
Since 2011, members of municipal and regional election commissions must have a university degree. Vrabchev said his diploma is from the Haskovo branch of Plovdiv University, in DNA, and that he earned it during his regular military service.
On 15 October, Burgas council said it will drive voters with poor eyesight or limited mobility to polling stations in the 25 October election. The service was announced on request, at the price of a city transport ticket.
Vrabchev told BNT: "There is a ruling of the Supreme Administrative Court that my diploma meets the requirements. The ruling was final."