The Austrian Election: In Counting There is Strength

In the runoff for the recent Austrian presidential election, the FPÖ candidate Norbert Hofer was beaten by a slim margin after the postal votes were counted. The absentee ballots favored the Green candidate Alexander van der Bellen, enough to give him the final victory.

It turns out that there were a few, well, peculiarities in this election. One of them is described in this brief article from Österreich Online. Many thanks to Nash Montana for the translation:

Wrong result for Waidhofen/Ybbs declared

Does not mean a substantial change of the general outcome

The Ministry of the Interior published a false election result on their homepage for the Lower Austrian city Waidhofen an der Ybbs. The chart showed a voter participation of 146.9% . As the director of the electoral office, Robert Stein, stated Monday night on “ZiB 2” on ORF [the state broadcaster], the result will be corrected.

No indications of similar errors

There is no indication that this error has any substantial impact on the general outcome of the election, and at this time there are no indications either that there are similar errors which could influence the election result, says Stein.

“No indications of similar errors” means that none have yet found their way into the press. Given the other “irregularities” in the vote — the massive number of votes for Van der Bellen among the postal ballots, the massive number of votes for Hofer among the spoiled ballots — I’d have to say that this election is definitely quacking like a Boss Tweed duck.

8 thoughts on “The Austrian Election: In Counting There is Strength

  1. The story continues, Frans Timmermans is in Poland bullying and interfering with her internal governmental affairs, Juncker is proudly declaring that the EU will veto and not deal with any right wing populist governments and Merkel is awaiting her latest instructions from her master Erdogan.
    The Austrian presidential election result was obviously fixed as will the BREXIT vote in the UK will be too. Every friend and acquaintance I talk to is definitely in favour of voting OUT but according to the polls and the media a comfortable remain result is forecasted. The establishment already know the result.
    Western democracy is dead, free speech is dead, history abhors a vacuum and unfortunately it will be filled with Islamic Sharia Law unless Europeans wake up and rid themselves by any means of their treacherous Leaders.

  2. 146.9% turnout! That beats anything which ever occurred in Liberia!!

  3. The high number of spoiled ballots is the potential canary in the coal mine for me.

    Is this consistent with previous elections for FPO supporters, who did the counting, was the process open to abuse at any stage, etc etc.

    I was disappointed the FPO did not demand a recount.

  4. I don’t know about anywhere else, but in my country, when electricity meters are read, a man comes round, reads the meter and enters the numbers into his electronic widget. This is repeated in all the houses. Then it is downloaded via a telephone link to produce the bills. Until a more modern system of electronic voting is introduced then we will continue to have voting fraud on a massive scale. It happens here. Our biggest Nationalist Party suffers. In the last election, boxes of spoiled ballot papers were found with two crosses. One in pencil (official) and another for a rival candidate in biro. Crude but effective.

  5. The FPÖ can’t just say: “We demand a recount!” as there is a constitutional precedure that must be followed.

    There is indeed evidence of fraud. The official election election result will be published as a proclamation tomoroww; this is the start of a one-week objection period.

    We shall see what happens…

  6. There is no 100% proof about a fraud, only irregularities. At least thats what is officially known in Austria.

    The Austrian constitutional court of justice will not do anything if no proof is existent and if one is existent it will only repeat the election when the fraud is so massive that it would have changed the result of the previous election.

    Thats the reason the FPÖ does nothing atm. They would not have any chance of success without more proof.

  7. Many of us conclude the following:
    1) FPÖ does not want to reclaim, evoiding troubles.
    2) They received a serious menace.

    @JohnKD: As there is such high censorship, I would not trust what is “officially” known.

    The forces behind this forced influx are very mighty. It is too curious that Eastern Europe, even Spain and Portugal etc. are allowed to stay free or practically free (Spain announced this week to let in 600 “refugees” in June, out of 17.000 they offerend to receive. In the meantime, Germany last year must have taken 3 Mio (2,5 Mio officially announced and 500.000 disappeared, also very curious….), and Austria… I am not sure about the 90.000. By now, surely much more, some 120.000, in a very small country. And if you look at the Refugee/Migrant Crime Map https://twitter.com/XYEinzelfall and are able to follow the violence spreading in Central Europe, one has to ask why this is only happening there….

  8. @Espinaca
    dont get me wrong. I am sure that the FPÖ will demand a repetition of the election, if they have enough proof. Maybe we will see this soon. I know Mr. Strache increases the investigations.

    He has some help, even from the socialist side. For example one the most powerful socialist media moguls in Austria, Mr. W. Fellner, wrote today in Ö24 news mag that Austria should stop the use of election cards because of the easy possibilities of a fraud.

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