First, let me quote from the preliminary findings of the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, represented by a mission of nine observers in Hungary for the 2018 national election. The mission’s final report is not yet available, but here are a few observations from the mission’s preliminary conclusions.
According to them, the Hungarian elections were “characterized by a pervasive overlap between state and ruling party resources, undermining contestants’ ability to compete on an equal basis.” In addition, they noted “the intimidating and xenophobic rhetoric, media bias and opaque campaign financing [which] constricted the space for genuine political debate, hindering voters’ ability to make a fully-informed choice.” After describing the biased election coverage by the public television and radio stations, the mission pointed out that, “contrary to OSCE commitments, citizen election observation is not permitted. Legislative constraints and intimidating rhetoric by the government stifled civil society’s involvement in election-related activities, limiting the public’s access to non-partisan assessment of the elections.” In brief, this latest Hungarian election, by now the second in a row, might have been free but was certainly not fair.
That’s not all. In the last two days questions have been raised from many directions, reinforcing the possibility of electoral fraud. As far as I can ascertain, the first person who raised the possibility of foul play was András Hont, a regular contributor to HVG’s op-ed page. He simply couldn’t accept the fact that the inhabitants of Hódmezővásárhely, who only a month ago overwhelmingly voted against the Fidesz mayoral candidate, would cast their votes for János Lázár in the national election. A month ago they rebelled against the man who has been behind all the dirty politicking in town for the last 30 years. How is it possible that the people of Hódmezővásárhely now endorse him with enthusiasm? Hont admitted that he has no proof, but his gut feeling was that Fidesz somehow manipulated the results. Of course, this was just an emotional outburst, certainly not grounds for seriously questioning the outcome of the election.
But as of today people studying the results found a few oddities which may not have altered the final tally substantially but nonetheless raised doubts about some of the figures. At certain polling stations the percentage of invalid ballots was unusually high. In a small town in Nógrád County 35% of the ballots turned out to be void. In Pécsudvard, 48% of the ballots were discarded for the same reason. In another town in Pest County, only seven invalid ballots were cast for individual candidates, but 57 were cast for party lists. In Bernadett Szél’s district, at just one polling station, the members of the election committee found 192 invalid ballots (out of a total of 615 in the precinct). And that wasn’t the only oddity. At the same polling station Szél received 233 votes while LMP received only 53. DK and MSZP-P, the parties that supported her, together got only 47 votes. Surely, something was not quite right here.
These cases, strange as they seem, might have some innocuous explanation. On the other hand, the fact that during the election the National Election Office at 6:30 p.m. claimed that 5,365,511 people had voted thus far but half an hour later changed the number downward to 5,011,380 or, in a later version, to 5,283,097 is more serious. Again, there might be some rational explanation for this occurrence, but the disappearance of about 350,000 voters raises suspicion.
What further upset those who are unhappy with the results was that the new software the National Election Office purchased in advance of the election allegedly collapsed, and the Office’s website was unavailable for two hours. When the administrators were unable to restore it, they had to settle for the old platform. As a result, the site has only a limited amount of information. Moreover, according to the head of the National Election Office, the system will not be completely restored until Saturday.
There seems to be a controversy about the nature of the software problem. Ilona Pálffy, the person in charge, claimed yesterday on ATV that the mishap affected only the web site, while the media talks about the collapse of the whole system, which may have influenced the outcome of the election. I’m certainly not in a position to express any opinion on that score, but the opposition is extremely suspicious.
I don’t know how much proof Ferenc Gyurcsány has, but he claims that what happened on Sunday was “a planned, conscious, and hostile” fraud. His party wants to compare the figures at the polling stations with the published results. DK would like to recount all votes in polling stations where no delegates from opposition parties were present. DK also objects to the decision of the National Election Office that resulted in a three and a half hour delay in releasing data after the closing of the polling stations, because this might have been enough time to alter the numbers. MSZP-P, LMP, and Jobbik also decided to declare their intention to insist on recounts in a great number of questionable precincts.
A group of non-politicians and experts under the leadership of György Magyar, a lawyer, established the “Committee of Doubt” which is supposed to investigate the hundreds and thousands of complaints people are reporting. As he put it, “without proof [the planned] demonstration is only empty indignation.” They will wait until the end of the week when the votes coming from abroad will also be counted, but then they would like to compare the results of the 10,620 polling stations with the figures of the National Election Office. Whether they will have the opportunity to do so is another matter.
Finally, I would like to share a few thoughts from a commenter who called attention to the following anomaly. At 7:00 p.m. Ferenc Gyurcsány announced that this government deserved to lose the election and that he has the estimates of the DK delegates but it wouldn’t be ethical to reveal them. At the same time Gergely Gulyás (Fidesz) declared that “our goal is to achieve a stable, absolute majority with 100 seats to establish a government. Above that number every seat is only a gift, a sign of the voters’ trust.” Our commenter claims that these words don’t indicate Fidesz’s assurance of a two-thirds majority. Then there was the three and a half hours of silence, after which the National Election Office announced that Fidesz had won the election with a two-thirds majority. Thus, our man’s suspicion is that the “fraud occurred after the polling stations were closed.” Of course, this may be no more than a well-constructed conspiracy theory. If the government allowed the local results to be checked, this action would greatly calm the present turbulent atmosphere in the country. But I have my doubts after listening to Ilona Pálffy, the head of the National Election Office.
