‘Unusual’ ticket splitting

Normally, Hungarians cast both their votes in a general election – one for their local MP, the other for the party lists – for the same party. Sometimes, people split their votes between different parties for various reasons. That’s not suspicious in itself, but our data analysis found that ‘unusual’ ticket-splitting occurred more in rural areas, precincts with no opposition delegates and in places where it cannot be explained by a popular incumbent.

Specifically, in 5.6% of polling stations, ticket splitting was more than four times higher than the national average, with splitting twice as likely in polling stations where there were no opposition party officials monitoring the counting.

Disappearing absentee votes

Hungarians from within Hungary but currently outside the country (such as those working or studying abroad) have to vote in person at a Hungarian embassy. In addition, people who are away from home on the day of the vote can choose to cast their ballot in person in another polling station in Hungary. These absentee ballots are then transported to their relevant constituency to be counted. However, the number of these voters who showed up to cast their ballots, as recorded on the official website, is 2,918 higher than the number of envelopes recorded as being counted – implying that 1% of the total votes went missing.

While some of this can be explained by errors in how precinct committees filled out the voter logs, there is still a large number of ballots that remain unaccounted for – enough to influence the outcome in one or more single-member constituencies.

Asked about this discrepancy, the Hungarian National Election office said “all absentee and embassy votes were counted”.

How many voters were there?

It is not clear how many people were eligible to vote in the election.

Widespread inconsistencies exist between screenshots of the officially updated election website taken in the months leading up to the election, copies of the numbers of eligible voters taken from the official online archive, and monitoring data from the OSCE.

Voters in Hungary are listed automatically, and so changes in the number of people within the country who are eligible should only result from citizens reaching voting age or dying. On the other hand, voters who are not domiciled in Hungary, mostly ethnic Hungarians in Romania, Ukraine and Serbia, need to actively submit a request every 10 years. The total electorate is made up by adding together in-country voters and those who do not have permanent in-country residency.

Reports of what this total is varied, with the National Election Office announcing one number at a press conference one day before the election (footage of which has been obtained by Unhack Democracy Europe), but publishing a different number on its website, and the state media reporting a different number again. The figure reported on the National Election Office website increased by around 60,000 one day before the vote, and the total reported on the site was greater than the sum of the total number of in-country voters and out-of-country voters reported on the same site. Likewise, the total of in-country domiciled voters – the biggest part of the electorate – varied widely between these announcements, and, along with the other numbers, didn’t always add up to the relevant total figure declared by the National Election Office.

"A fair and transparent election relies on a clear and transparent voter register,” says Gábor Tóka. “The apparent inconsistency of the numbers from the National Election Office on their web page in campaign periods undermines the credibility of elections in the eyes of the public, as does the unwillingness of the National Election Office to provide simple, intelligible explanation of how various numbers on their pages need to be interpreted.”

Election website malfunction

In the run-up to the election the official National Election Office website experienced repeated malfunctions when absentee and embassy voters unsuccessfully attempted to register. A crash on the morning of the election forced them to revert to a backup site, which meant parties were unable to access scanned copies of original precinct voter logs and the records of previous decisions by the National Election Commission. In a unanimous decision that commission condemned the National Election Office for breaking the law by not making previous decisions available on its site.

According to a report from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe into the election, “Some ODIHR [OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights]/LEOM [Limited Election Observation Mission] interlocutors stated that citizens had no access to information that had been available on the regular website, such as the possibility to file a complaint electronically.”

The National Election Office told openDemocracy: “Voters never file complaints through the website” and “there was no problem with the embassy voters’ submissions”.

Election software breakdown

Hungarian votes are counted by hand in polling stations, then the results are submitted online to the national office, where they are added up. We have collected testimonials from ballot counting officers in at least six constituencies across the country who repeatedly referred to this software “freezing” or going down completely on election day.

“They said the system is not functioning properly, that it is slow and it froze. We waited for an hour only for them to say that the system froze,” said one officer. “We have not experienced anything like this before. We finished counting by 8.30pm, then they let us out after 11pm and we waited at the municipality’s stairs until half past one [in the morning].

By the time the logs had been submitted and printed for signing, the officer said: “I did not even look at what I was signing.”

Despite the software system failure and closeness of some constituency races, initial results were announced declaring Fidesz’ supermajority three hours after polls closed. Only under pressure from opposition parties did the National Election Office finally hand over scanned versions of the original voter logs from all 10,285 precincts.

Asked about the claims of numerous counting officers that the system had frozen, the National Election Office responded: “The election IT system processing the election data functioned without any failure during the election”.

The logs of single-member constituencies were handed over on 11 April and the party list voter logs per precinct were handed over on the 12th, four days after the election. Responding to questions about this delay, the National Election Office said: “On the backup site all handwritten copies of the polling station minutes were available, which is a unique guarantee of the transparency of the election.”

The Head of the National Election Office vehemently denied that there was anything wrong with the election software. Prompted by reports of irregularities, election-day software malfunction and reports of delays in handing over the voter logs, over 100,000 people took to the streets of Budapest in the days after the vote to demand a recount and new elections.

But a spokesperson for the Socialist party backed up the claims by the election agents we interviewed, saying: “On the day of the election, the part of the National Election Office’s software system that was used to transmit the turnout data and the processed vote results to the National Election Office completely stopped and the official internet site was unavailable. “So, one year after the elections, we still don’t know what damage was done by this unparalleled chaos as [the National Election Office] still has not managed to provide a reassuring explanation: could it have been an external attack or could unauthorised persons access certain data?”

The spokesperson added: “This together with the missing absentee ballots” could have delivered Fidesz its supermajority.