The Guardians Council spokesman, Nejatollah Ebrahimian, said due to the lack of a legal framework and security problems, the Feb. 26 elections of Majlis and Assembly of Experts will not be held electronically.
In an interview with Fars News Agency in Tehran on Wednesday, Ebrahimian said the 12-member body has decided to cancel the plan for replacing ballot boxes with electronic voting machines in one-third of the polling stations across the country.
The spokesman explained that the parliament has failed to prepare the legal framework for conducting elections using electronic hardware and there were also security concerns about the electronic machines.
"Bodies tasked with checking security features of the system have announced that they cannot fully approve the machines," he said.
In the meantime, Siamak Rahpeik, a member of the Guardians Council, said the final number of qualified candidates may increase by 50% or 55%.
Beginning the process of vetting candidates, the Executive Boards, under the supervision of the Interior Ministry, evaluated the qualifications of 12,123 hopefuls for Majlis elections from December 26 to January 4 and approved 90% of them.
Then the Election Monitoring Board, under the supervision of the Guardians Council, carried out the second round of vetting process.
It announced last week that 40% of candidates were qualified and 26% were disqualified, while it could not approve or disapprove the qualifications of 28% of nominees and 6% withdrew from the race.
In the third and last phase of the process, the Guardians Council, a clerical charged with supervising the elections, began to vet the candidates on January 17.
The final list of qualified candidates will be released on February 16, 2016.
