The government and the Ministry of the Interior have boosted their efforts to combat buying and selling of votes in the local elections run-off on Sunday, Prime Minister Nikolai Denkov said in a video address. He pointed out that one of the most important tasks of the cabinet is to ensure the fair conduct of the vote, given the record number of reports of election violations since the beginning of the election campaign.

According to the prime minister, more than half of the 1,125 signals received are related to buying votes.

"Another key step towards ensuring the fair reporting of the election results has been completed - the authentication of the voting machines. The report has already been sent to the Central Election Commission," Nikolai Denkov said. According to him, this is extremely important in order not to avoid a big number of invalid votes.The CEC announced that in the second round of the local elections, it will be possible to vote with machines in 5,900 stations.

The prime minister said that the cabinet would do everything necessary to assure citizens that they are the ones who decide who would govern their city or town and that there would be no electoral manipulations. "The teams of the Ministry of Interior are working overtime to limit vote trading as much as possible," he added.