Minister for Smart Administration and Regional Development, Inga Bērziņa (New Unity), will dismiss Jorens Liops, Director of the State Agency for Digital Affairs (VDAA), from his position.
In an interview with the TV3 programme “900 Seconds” on Monday morning, Bērziņa emphasized that the way vote counting was handled during the recent municipal elections was unacceptable. Since VDAA operates under the supervision of the Ministry for Smart Administration and Regional Development (VARAM), Bērziņa has decided to remove Liops from his post.
VARAM State Secretary Edvīns Balševics will be appointed as acting head of VDAA.
Bērziņa stressed that such responsible positions must be held by trustworthy individuals, especially with parliamentary elections coming up next year.
As reported, an inter-institutional working group will meet today to conduct an official review of what led to the problems with counting municipal election results, the Director of the State Chancellery, Raivis Kronbergs, told the LETA news agency.
VDAA has already launched a detailed internal investigation at all levels of responsibility — from those directly overseeing the election system to developers and auditors — to determine the reasons behind the slow processing of ballot scanning, said Agnese Tkačenko, Project Manager in VDAA’s Administrative Department.
Tkačenko noted that if the causes for the ballot scanning delays had been easily identifiable during election night, VDAA would have done everything possible to address the issue promptly.
She added that more than 600 polling stations used electronic systems, meaning ballots were scanned in two-thirds of polling places.
According to VDAA data, 284 381 ballots, or 41%, were scanned and processed electronically.
These figures will also be reassessed during an audit, which will help clarify the performance capacity of the current system, Tkačenko added.
VDAA representatives did not provide a comment to LETA regarding whether Director Jorens Liops intended to resign. However, during a TV3 News and “Nekā personīga” special election broadcast on Sunday, the 8th of June, Liops said it was premature for him to take responsibility for the election night’s technical failures.
As reported earlier, President Edgars Rinkēvičs stated that both the CVK and VDAA had failed in organizing the municipal elections. He urged the Saeima and the government to evaluate the performance and accountability of the institutions involved.
The President emphasized the need for concrete solutions to ensure that next year’s parliamentary elections proceed smoothly and without incidents like those seen in the recent municipal vote.
Vote counting during the 2025 municipal elections on Saturday and into Sunday night was plagued by technical problems. Issues also arose at polling stations earlier in the week during early voting.