Those who followed the elections in the Republic of Moldova probably wondered how it is possible for a small country with significant suspicions of corruption, and with a electoral process where we witnessed extensive Russian manipulations, to have a much better system for counting votes and communicating results.
Not only was voter turnout being counted in real-time, but also the vote counting, so that at every moment, the official percentage of each candidate from the votes already counted was known.
Such a transparent system also eliminates the lottery of exit polls, which often record significant errors but, being the first announced, stick better in the electorate's memory than the final results. And the differences fuel suspicions of fraud.
### L-am întrebat pe [Ovidiu Voicu](https://www.inovarepublica.ro/author/ovidiu/), director executiv al Centrului pentru Inovare Publică, de ce nu putem avea și noi un sistem ca în R. Moldova.
We have a system not much different from the Republic of Moldova (RM). Just that ours is poorly implemented. And, of course, it works better in simple elections, where you have a ballot with two candidates.
In the polling station, the minutes are scanned, uploaded to the AEP system managed by STS because it needs to be secured, and appear on the BEC website, in the dedicated section, in real-time.
The ballot bags are there because there must be evidence, proof in case someone contests or someone interferes with the computer program. There could be cyber-attacks, these things cannot be excluded.
**What we don't have is that real-time vote counting system because AEP didn't want it.** Currently, there are NGOs that take over the recorded minutes and take this additional step.
I, personally, knew how to enter my voting section to see in real-time how the minutes were being collected there during local elections, for example.
##### De ce nu vrea AEP? Primul motiv care vine în minte este ascunderea unei fraude.
Yes, obviously, that's the thought, but I don't believe that. Rather, **they are simply incompetent**.
When appointed as head of the Electoral Authority, Constantin Mitulețu-Buică brought all his friends from PSD Craiova there and significantly reduced the technical and operational capacity of the AEP, including in the field of electoral experts, meaning the presidents and vice-presidents of the polling stations.
**So many problems stem from the fact that AEP, with the consent of PSD, was taken over by this Mitulețu-Buică clan.**
It will take a while for them to regain their technical capacity. We hope it will move in the right direction.
As I said, it also depends on how simple or complicated the vote is. In our case, elections are often consolidated, so the technical operations are much more complicated, take longer, involve more minutes, etc.
We will see in the second round of the presidential elections, at a counting and publishing speed similar to that in Moldova.
##### Există o istorisire a unui jurnalist, cum că STS ar fi propus AEP introducerea aplicației care să contorizeze în tip real procentele candidaților, dar a fost refuzat.
I wouldn't be surprised. I am usually critical of many intelligence services we have, but **in this field, which I have been following for several years, STS has always been a loyal partner**.
The voter turnout monitoring system, which largely eliminated fraud, was done with the help and participation of STS.
Romania has the systems, as you said, it's not even a new application, it's a module of the same application to automatically process these minutes. This is what volunteers from Code for Romania or Expertforum do.
Why didn't AEP have it? It's a discussion we shouldn't dwell on.
##### Și iar revenim la suspiciunea de fraudă...
In local elections, they may have left a margin to move votes if necessary. Then, the keys don't match because of the poor quality of the entire process.
Let me give you an example: **ballot packages do not leave the National Printing Office already counted, they leave weighed**. Meaning the voting section receives a package with the vote package, weighed after coming out of the printing press. And it says there are 100 ballots.
But there is a margin of error, the paper is very poor, so in the end, they find out there were not 100 ballots, but 99 or 101.
So throughout the electoral process, there is a small error of one or two votes, one or two ballots. In the end, the keys won't match, and another operation with a pen needs to be done to solve this problem.
##### Dar schimbarea din pix nu se face înainte de încheierea procesului verbal?
Sometimes it's done at the BECs. It's an important reason not because someone necessarily wants to commit fraud, but because we are stingy and do things poorly.
The system goes wrong because the management of the system by AEP is poor.
*The interview transcript was made with the [Vatis Tech](https://vatis.tech/) application.*