‘It is not possible to change results of vote counting machine’
On October 13, the General Election Commission (GEC) of Mongolia held a press briefing in relations to questions surrounding the reliability of voting machine.
The GEC has decided to hold a “pilot” polling in order to resolve doubts about the reliability of voting machines.
According to the GEC, 2,615 voting machines were inspected and certified in 2,148 polling stations nationwide. There will be 986 counting machines in 453 polling stations in nine districts of Ulaanbaatar. Participating political parties and coalitions will choose the vote counting machine and the GEC will test it.
Noting that law enforcement agencies shall investigate issues related to the video of alleged distribution of money prior to election, Director of Legal Department of the GEC D.Bat-Erdene said, “If it is deemed a criminal action, the Independent Authority Against Corruption (IAAC) will investigate it. The GEC has not yet received a court decision.”
“There were two actions in the video that was posted online yesterday. There may be fraudulent activities. However, it is not possible to change the results of the vote counting machine or to influence it from the outside. We sent a request to the IAAC to check this,” he added.
On the same day, some political parties held a press briefing on the 2020 local election in connection with the submission of an official letter to the National Security Council (NSC).
They believe that there is a risk of hacking the vote counting machines and changing the election results. Therefore, they demanded to urgently discuss it at the meeting of the NSC, amend the parliamentary resolution on the use of voting machines in the 2020 elections, ban the use of New Image Cast devices in the counting process, count the local election votes manually, and make use of ink marks on the fingers of voters who cast their ballots.
The demand was submitted to President Kh.Battulga, Prime Minister U.Khurelsukh, Speaker of Parliament G.Zandanshatar, and the NSC.
Other political parties made statements about voting machines on October 12.
A member of political party said, “In the last parliamentary election, votes were hacked using black machines in certain constituencies. The related videos were found. ‘During the recent parliamentary election, we carried out a large-scale operation. It was successful,’ said someone in the video.”
Noting that there are many videos related to faults with the vote counting machines, they said that when 100 relatives of a candidate cast their vote for the candidate, only three votes were counted. There is a lot of confusion like this.