Allegations of electoral fraud
April 13th, 2018As Facebook swarms with complaints by opposition sympathisers about widespread electoral fraud, even some critics of the government warn that there is no indication of organised attempts to alter the results of Sunday’s election.
On 24.hu, Dániel Bita and Tamás Mázsár compile a long list of irregularities found by local opposition representatives and finds the collapse of the server of the National Electoral Committee unacceptable. The authors would deem even the loss of one single vote shameful, but conclude that the number and the circumstances of those cases reflect mistakes and lack of attention rather than an organised attempt to hijack votes.
On Mérce, András Jámbor deems three local cases of people having been paid for their votes plausible and believes that stories of votes by mail arriving in open envelopes are true. Nevertheless, he calls rumours about Fidesz thwarting the will of the electorate a legend about which no evidence has surfaced.
On his Átlátszó blog post, Csaba Tordai who served as State Secretary in the last left-wing government writes that wholesale electoral fraud is practically impossible in Hungary It would require the cooperation of at least 50 thousand people which would be impossible to keep secret. The conspiracy theories about electoral fraud are mostly due to ignorance about the electoral procedure, Tordai writes.