"We are used to everything being fast, easy, and elegant. [...] These elections have somewhat shattered the feeling that if something is stable in this country, it is the elections," commented Rudīte Spakovska, Editor-in-Chief of the News Service of Latvian Television (LTV), pointing to the failures in the technical process of the elections.
For example, on June 8, shortly after 16:00, the CVK website displayed higher turnout data than in reality. The CVK later corrected the error, but the incorrect data managed to confuse journalists and voters alike.
Kristīne Saulīte, head of the CVK, stressed to LSM.lv that in this case, the error was not in the collection and compilation of data, but in the publication. "The incident has been assessed and it has been established that at no time was the collection and compilation of data compromised," Saulīte noted.
Journalists are more critical of this case. Spakovska said: "If I look at it this way, I think it was quite unfortunate - those turnout figures on election day which appeared in error and then disappeared. The data appeared, I took it, passed it on for the [television], but at that point I realized that it was all in vain and should be thrown out."
Edmunds Jurēvics, the head of the New Unity parliamentary faction leading the government, also called the failure with turnout data an "unpleasant case". He told LSM.lv: "We need to find out whether it was some kind of technical error or what. There was one moment where we got too happy that there was already too much activity."
The error with the turnout data was also noticed later - about 100 votes were suddenly deducted. As the CVK later explained, these voters had originally indicated that they would vote by post from abroad but still voted at polling stations in Latvia on election day. As each voter can vote once, these postal votes were canceled.
On the technical side, the CVK has also been criticized for the method chosen for counting the votes. In particular, no electronic counting system was used, but the votes were counted manually by polling station staff. This was criticized both by election observers, who argued that this method of counting meant excessively long working hours for polling station staff, and by the Minister of Economics, Viktors Valainis of the government-forming Greens and Farmers Union (ZZS), who criticized the fact that the vote counting was done in "Excel spreadsheets".
The CVK has also been criticized for its communication. In particular in the situation where an error was made in the presentation of voter turnout data.
"OK, it can happen. But I was surprised that the data simply disappeared from the CVK website, and no notification of erroneous and corrected data followed. [...] The CVK website is not just for journalists, it is followed by the whole Latvian public, and the whole public just saw the data and suddenly it disappeared. Given the temperature of concern about the fairness of the electoral process, this was an unpleasant case of non-disclosure," Spakovska, Editor-in-Chief of LTV News Service, said.
Other journalists interviewed by LSM.lv also said that the communication of the CVK was not normal.
Confusion about turnout data dragged on until the last moment. At the press conference announcing the provisional results at midnight on June 9, the head of the CVK gave an incorrect - much higher - number of people who had voted, which did not match the information on the CVK website.
On Monday, June 17, the CVK approved the results of the European Parliament elections, with three of its nine members abstaining. LSM.lv reports that Aldis Austers, Ringolds Balodis and Ina Svilāne, who represent Progressives, Latvia First and For Stability! fractions, abstained.
The three members of the CVK addressed a letter to all Saeima factions, Saeima Speaker Daiga Mieriņa (ZZS) and the head of the Saeima State Administration and Local Government Commission Oļegs Burovs, expressing their lack of confidence in the Chairperson of the CVK Saulīte and calling on the Saeima to improve the law on the CVK.
Austers, Balodis and Svilāne state in the letter that they were not "given the opportunity to get acquainted with the data processing process, to find out the specifications of the IT system technical solutions, process schemes, algorithm data - how the CVK ensures the processing and compilation of the European Parliament election results data, which was obtained from the counting protocols sent by the election precinct commissions".
In view of the above, in order to eliminate suspicions, Austers, Balodis and Svilāne in their letter have requested "a simplified audit of the IT system for the European Parliament election results, checking the algorithms that were used to obtain the election results - to determine the winners".
