RIGA, July 9 (LETA) - The biggest problem in the last municipal elections was the lack of vertical communication downwards with the local election commissions of towns and districts, Maris Zviedris, the new head of the Central Election Commission (CVK), told LETA in an interview.

He admitted that he had not yet found an answer to the question of how information technology (IT) systems could have been overloaded in the municipal elections when it is clearly known how many registered voters and polling stations there are in Latvia, i.e. both the maximum possible number of voters and polling stations, as well as the number of voting slips from these polling stations which were to be uploaded.

"Maybe something was not foreseen, something was not thought out, but I can assure you that the election commissions were not asked anything either," Zviedris said.

He also pointed out that he believes the biggest problem was that there was a lack of vertical communication down to the city and regional election commissions.

"We asked, have you taken this and that into account? But everyone was so arrogant and such big experts that they knew best. And, look where we now are," said the new head of the CVK, adding that under his leadership the CVK will not step on that rake again - if there are any concerns, they will be listened to, discussed and experts would be brought in.

At the same time, he noted that he is not saying that the results of next year's parliamentary elections would be counted by hand and that the IT systems that did not work properly in the recent elections would be put aside.

"The state has invested enough money in these systems and it is therefore not economical to simply put them aside. Especially when a lot of experts - at least from the National Digital Development Agency - say it's fixable. So why not do it?" Zviedris said.