The Central Election Commission (CVK) plans to complete the repairs of Latvia’s election IT systems for use in the 2026 parliamentary elections by the end of June, CVK chair Māris Zviedris said in an interview with TV3 on Wednesday morning.
Zviedris explained that since the municipal elections earlier this year, the election IT systems have undergone on-site testing, during which several deficiencies were identified — though no fundamental problems were found.
A public procurement will be announced in January to select a company to fix the remaining issues. Zviedris hopes that between March and May, the improved system can be tested again, ensuring that preparations are completed on time. This may also mean that a new system developer will be contracted.
Zviedris noted that he is not aware of any financial penalties imposed on the previous developer, whose product malfunctioned during the municipal elections.
The submission of candidate lists for the next parliamentary elections will begin at the end of June,
so the IT system must be ready about a month earlier, he stressed.
“The plan is that after the end of June, no further updates will be made to the system to avoid any untested changes. If the system improvements are not completed on time, we will not use it — votes will be counted manually,” Zviedris said.
Earlier this week, during a meeting of the Saeima’s Public Administration and Local Government Committee, officials acknowledged that the technical problems during this year’s municipal elections resulted from a lack of time.
A representative of the State Regional Development Agency (VDAA) explained that although the software for vote counting was delivered properly and functioned as intended, there were configuration errors on the virtual platform.
“What happened were configuration errors — the system went live without being properly calibrated,”
the representative said, adding that insufficient testing time caused the failures.
Zviedris said that CVK has been cooperating with the VDAA to analyze the root causes of the election-night issues and that better communication among all parties involved in the election process will be crucial in the future.
He added that while the necessary systems were delivered on time, additional work was required to fully adapt them.
Preparations for the parliamentary elections are on schedule, and a technical audit has been completed, Zviedris confirmed.
The same software that malfunctioned earlier is planned to be used again in the parliamentary elections, though municipal election commissions will have the option to choose between scanning or manual counting.
No new ballot formats are currently planned.
As reported, the 2025 municipal elections were marred by technical failures, including vote-counting disruptions and issues during early voting.
CVK also faced criticism for poor communication with both the public and polling stations. On one of the early voting days, the commission incorrectly claimed that the system had been hit by an external cyberattack, which later proved false. During election night, when the vote-counting system failed, polling stations received no clear instructions for an extended period.
In August, following an internal investigation, VDAA director Jorens Liopa was demoted for disciplinary violations related to the election IT management. Before that, CVK chair Kristīne Saulīte and Minister for Smart Administration and Regional Development Inga Bērziņa (New Unity) both resigned over the election system crisis.
The Saeima elections are scheduled to take place next year.
Read also: Urging reconciliation, Latvian President does not rule out government change
The post Election system glitches still being fixed — authorities promise to resolve issues before parliamentary vote appeared first on Baltic News Network.
