RIGA, July 10 (LETA) - The new head of the Central Election Commission (CVK), Maris Zviedris, expressed his opinion in an interview with LETA that clarity on the possibility of using the SKEN IS vote counting system in the next parliamentary elections should be made by October this year - at least a year before the elections.

According to Zviedris, if a decision is made to use this system and to trust in the ability of information technology (IT) specialists to deal with potential challenges, then load tests should definitely be carried out, which, according to the information available to him, were not implemented before these municipal elections.

"Moreover, it should be at least one month before the elections. If, God forbid, something unforeseeable happens after the load test, which also cannot be ruled out, we will draw up a clear action plan that would allow a decision on the hand count to be taken literally within ten minutes," said the new head of the CVK.

One of his proposals, which still needs to be discussed with his colleagues at the CVK, could be to revise the instructions and allow city and regional electoral commissions to decide on a hand count themselves if there is a corresponding disruption in the system, Zviedris said. "This time, we waited almost three hours for permission to do this. Close to 6,000 workers were sitting in the middle of the night just waiting for permission to take the next steps. This is totally unacceptable," said Zviedris.

If the problem impacts everyone, he would like to see information on the next steps reaching the electoral commissions within half an hour at most.

According to Zviedris, if IT systems fail a load test a month before the parliamentary elections, a decision is taken at that very moment to count the votes by hand.

"Then we don't confuse everyone and hope until the last minute, as we did this time. If the load test is not passed a month before the elections, it is a clear signal that there is a big risk. Then we don't risk it!" said Zviedris.