The Election Commission has proposed that the Coordination Council extend the voting period in the elections. This was announced during an open session of the commission. It should be recalled that voting in the Coordination Council elections had been scheduled to take place from May 11 to 17.
As Election Commission Chair Alena Prykhodzka explained, from the first days of May the “Try Slany” platform, where information about candidates for the Coordination Council was размещена, was subjected to large-scale DDoS attacks. As a result, changes were made to the platform’s technical infrastructure in order to reduce the threat from attacks, including changes to the technical specifications. This required additional testing after the implementation of the changes. The tests had been planned for May 10 before the start of voting. However, on that day, “Nasha Niva” published a report about the provider SumSub. As a result, the start of voting was postponed until 10:00 p.m. on May 11 in order to verify the company SumSub. During all this time, no technical testing was conducted. After the completion of the internal review and the decision to continue cooperation with SumSub, it was decided to return to testing. As a result, the tests began only a few hours before the scheduled start of voting. Immediately before the launch of voting, the “Try Slany” platform and the voting platform were subjected to new massive DDoS attacks. The commission decided to extend testing until the morning of May 12.
“This morning we gathered in order to confirm that the voting platform has been fully tested, is ready, secure and capable of operating under conditions of a permanent DDoS attack, which is continuing,” Prykhodzka said.
According to her, instructions for voters will soon appear on the Coordination Council’s channel.
As the platform was unavailable to voters until the morning of May 12, the Election Commission decided to appeal to the Coordination Council with a proposal to extend voting. The final decision on extending the voting period must be made by the Coordination Council.
“Taking all of this into account, the Election Commission has decided to prepare an appeal to the Coordination Council with recommendations to consider the possibility of extending the voting period by the number of hours during which the platform was inaccessible. We will prepare these recommendations, officially send them to the Coordination Council, and the final decision on this matter will be made by the Coordination Council,” the head of the Election Commission added.
Alena Prykhodzka noted that the platform is now available and the first voters have already been registered.
Platform for voting in the Coordination Council elections. Votes can also be cast through the SVAE Peera app for Android and through TestFlight for iOS. Detailed instructions are available here.