The Latvian minister for smart administration and regional development, Inga Berzina, has announced the suspension of the director of the country’s State Digital Development Agency, Jorens Liopa, from his job.
Appearing on TV3 on Monday morning, Berzina declared that it is unacceptable how vote counting has been organised during the last several elections, and because the agency is subordinate to the ministry, the decision has been made to suspend its director.
The state secretary of the ministry, Edvins Balsevics, is to become the acting head of the Digital Development Agency.
Berzina said that given that parliamentary elections are due next year, in 2026, such positions bear a great deal of responsibility and must be held by trustworthy people.
In an interview on Radio Latvia, Minister Berzina said that the Central Elections Commission should also be responsible for the botched vote counting process during the past weekend’s local government election, because it was in charge of the whole process. The minister repeatedly insisted that the way in which the votes were counted was unacceptable, and such incidents should never occur again.
True, Berzina also rejected the idea that she should take political responsibly for what happened, arguing in the radio interview that this would mean unacceptable politicisation of election processes. She added that in general terms, Latvia is highly advanced digitally, and that is something to be proud of.
An interagency task force is to meet later on Monday to discuss problems with the vote count, LETA learned at the State Chancellery.
Meanwhile, the Digital Development Agency has launched an in-depth probe into the reasons for the slow scanning of ballots in the election. The focus will be on agency employees who are directly responsible for the election system – both developers and auditors, LETA was told by a senior official at the agency, Agnese Tkacenko.
She says that if the reasons for the slow scanning of ballots had been easily identifiable on election night, the agency would have done everything in its power to eliminate the problem.
Electronic vote counting was ongoing at more than 600 polling stations, Tkacenko said, which means that ballots were scanned at two-thirds of precincts.
According to agency data, 41% of ballot papers (284,381) were scanned and processed electronically, and those figures will be double-checked, Tkacenko promised.
Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics had declared earlier that the Central Elections Commission and the Digital Development Agency obviously failed in organising the local election, which means that the Saeima and the government should revisit the institutions and the responsibilities of their officials.
The president added that concrete steps must be taken to ensure that next year’s parliamentary elections run smoothly and without incidents.
LETA reported in the past that there were problems with vote counting during the 2025 municipal elections because of technical difficulties on Saturday and overnight into Sunday. Polling stations had also reported technical problems during one week of advance voting.
Source: BNS
(Reproduction of BNS information in mass media and other websites without written consent of BNS is prohibited)
