The new head of state will cost five million euros

The State Election Commission is ready for the presidential election, assures SEC President Oliver Derkovski. The election will be conducted the old way, with an ultraviolet lamp and a spray, and according to estimates it will cost about five million euros. Most of the money, about three million euros, will be allocated for fees for the election boards, while the rest are for transport and electoral material. About 300 thousand euros will be allocated for placement of the polling boards.

Derkovski announced that it is working to vote in the next parliamentary elections with new technologies, more precisely by applying an electronic fingerprint.

“There are instruments that load your fingerprint and identify, your photo appears, and then the ballot comes out. The purpose of the application of the new technologies is due to the constant remarks about faults and shortcomings in the voter list and for the purpose of raising the confidence and achieving the principle one person – one vote. For the time being, the lamp and spray still remain the main tools against possible abuses,” said Derkovski.

In order to remove all doubts about the Voters’ List, the SEC suggests introducing electronic voting and electronic verification of data. But it takes time and changes to the Electoral Code. Experts believe that the issue of voter lists will exist until such a vote is introduced. Digital or online voting allows voters to exercise their right to vote outside the polling station, thus accessing a web application that can be found on the SEC website.

Electronic voting is not a substitute for regular voting, but only an opportunity for those who at the moment have no access to polling stations. That is, according to experts, a kind of addition, as in many countries is voting by mail. The advantages of this vote are cost savings and increased turnout because there would be people who do not have a particular polling station available to them during the election day. This would eliminate invalid ballots and speed up counting. The disadvantages are related to security risks, ie suspicion of identity theft, the possibility of a hacker’s attack and manipulation from within.

This system of voting is mostly practiced in developed countries, such as the USA, Canada, Brazil and Venezuela on the American continent. In Asia, Japan is a country that is synonymous with this type of voting, and in Europe electronic voting is used in the Netherlands, Britain, Estonia, Switzerland, France, Ireland and others.

The SEC published an advertisement for hiring 9 temporary employees, ie up to December 31, 2019. According to the announcement, the SEC needs managers from the Sector for the Electoral List, records of the voting right, compilation and updating of the voter list and the description of the polling stations, the Budget Control Unit, the System Software and Maintenance Unit and the Department for Information and International Cooperation.(N.K.)