Information Services, the firm that runs the vote count, showed in parliament how it will process votes in the 25 October 2026 presidential and vice-presidential election. For the first time, results will be read straight from the flash drives in the voting machines.

Aleksandar Stanev, head of the project for computer processing of election results, led the demonstration. He showed what happens during voting and counting, and how the software works. Georgi Horozov, chair of the Central Election Commission (CEC), and Ivaylo Filipov, the company's chief executive, attended.

Horozov said Information Services has counted votes for more than 20 years, and the count has always been reliable, open and on time. Filipov said the process follows the Electoral Code in full. "With all the openness, transparency and traceability of our actions, we want to give voters confidence that their vote will be counted correctly and properly," he said.

The company has prepared software for the data of the regional election commissions (RIKs) and the CEC, protection against DDoS attacks, communication servers, computers, printers, scanners, electronic signatures and a team of experts. To speed up the work and make it more accurate, it has 15% more equipment on average. Staff have had training and instructions.

RIK meetings are streamed online, and each day a system tells the CEC whether the commissions met. The system picked up 99% of the streams.

On election night, staff at the RIK centres will read and check the data from the machines and enter the reports from the polling station commissions. Members of the regional commissions will fill in, print and sign the data. The reports will then be scanned, signed with a qualified electronic seal and put on the websites, while interim data will go to the CEC centres. Camera scanners at all RIK centres make digitising three times faster.

No computing centre is linked to any network, and the machines in them work on their own. Processing runs without a break, so it finishes quickly and nobody can interfere from outside. The CEC centres are also cut off from networks and are under the commission's control. Information Services staff work in them, and the CEC also publishes turnout on election day from there.

Once the RIK data have been collected through the municipalities, the original reports are taken to the CEC and entered again. The final result is set by comparing the two. Anyone can check the software and repeat the calculations, and representatives of parties, coalitions and observers can look at the source code.

Stanev said the processes are close to those at the April parliamentary election, but changes to the Electoral Code have altered the rules for voting and for reading the results. He said protection rests on technical steps and on administrative steps set out in the code. It also includes security teams and the state bodies the company works with when incidents occur. "What we have always relied on as a technology is the absolute impossibility of compromising or swapping the data we process," Stanev said.

He said the infrastructure and safeguards are being upgraded so the system runs without failures and gives the right result fast. Publishing the scanned originals shows exactly what went into the system.

The "Izbori 360°" app was developed by the CEC and Information Services. It has been installed 26,000 times, and there are about 12,000 polling sections. Stanev thinks most of those who installed it will work faster. At the last parliamentary election, more than 151,000 people took part in the election process.