Software company says ethics committee solely responsible for KINAL election integrity

Open Technology Services (OTS), the IT company that provided the software in the leadership elections of the Movement for Change (KINAL), said the party’s Committee on Ethics, Implementation of Statutes and Certification (EDEKAP) is the only one responsible for the integrity of the elections.

The company was responding to allegations of voting irregularities made by George Papandreou, the former Prime Minister and socialist leader who is currently one of the two candidates in the second round of the election next Sunday.

“The guidelines and the faithful observance of the rules in the internal party elections of KINAL, are provided exclusively by EDEKAP. The Commission is the only body responsible for ensuring the integrity of the process and the certification of results,” OST said in a press release Friday.

OTS said that in some polling stations there was an inability to connect to the network. In these cases, the election committee, in consultation with EDEKAP, decided to continue the voting, by registering the voters in handwritten statements.

The names were then entered into the accreditation system to ensure concurrence between the electronic accreditations and the handwritten statements.

“The success of the project exceeded everyone’s expectations in terms of responsiveness and reliability, taking into account its high technical complexity and nationwide scope,” OST said.

The company will provide the software for the second round of the election contest.

In a letter to KINAL’s ethics committee on Thursday, Papandreou said there needed to be an “in-depth investigation” into complaints received by the committee of voting irregularities.

He said that after a review by his team of the official election results, “it transpired that in 164 polling stations (out of a total of 841, i.e. in 20% of the polling stations) more ballot papers were found than accredited voters.”

As a result, there were “at least 2,700 more ballot papers” than there should have been, he said.

MEP Nikos Androulakis won the first round comfortably last Sunday, garnering 37.06%, ahead of Papandreou’s 27.78%.