Weekly newsletter

Former PM Bajnai Announces Recruitment for Opposition Ballot Counters

Tamás Vaski 2021.10.26.

Former prime minister Gordon Bajnai has announced a commitment to ensuring an equal representation of vote counters delegated from both Fidesz and the opposition in the upcoming 2022 Hungarian election. To reduce the chances of “potential voter fraud,” Bajnai is spreading the word around 20k22, a movement which, through the cooperation of the six parties of Hungary’s joint opposition, aims to have an equal representation of Fidesz and Opposition-delegated volunteers in every electoral district around Hungary.

There needs to be a guarantee that the accumulation and counting of votes in the 2022 election will be legal, Gordon Bajnai highlights in a Facebook post. The former prime minister of the Socialists has made a call to the Hungarian public to volunteer as ballot counters in the upcoming election, with the interest of ensuring that the counting of votes takes place democratically.

Coming forward under the name of the Clean Election Foundation with “a team of almost 100 people,” the group responsible for the 2k22 movement has been backed by notable individuals from the opposition, such as independent Member of Parliament Ákos Hadházy.

Márki-Zay: Fidesz Gave DK Information During Primaries to Discredit Him
Márki-Zay: Fidesz Gave DK Information During Primaries to Discredit Him

The Democratic Coalition did not use its content but handed over the 80-page-long dossier to the conservative politician.Continue reading

Regarding the importance of representation of the opposition, Hadházy has said that “it does not matter who the individual prime ministerial candidate will be, but that we will have 20 thousand activists in the campaign.”

Opposition Aims to have 20 Thousand Vote Counters

So far, more than 7 thousand of the 20 thousand expected volunteers have voiced their participation in helping to count ballots, leftist Klubrádió reports. The benefit of having both parties represented at voting locations, they explain, is that one can report the other if they suspect cheating of occurring.

The need for ensuring such representation arose after the election of 2018, when 40 percent of vote counting committees either had too few or not enough volunteers delegated from opposition parties.

Opposition Parties Question Election Results
Opposition Parties Question Election Results

Jobbik will request recount of the votes in the recent national election in constituencies where a violation of the rules is suspected, Jobbik spokesman Péter Jakab said. Jakab said “public opinion” suggested that ruling Fidesz has faked the results and added that the choice for candidates of the governing parties was “whether to go to […]Continue reading

In the 2022 Hungarian parliamentary election, there will be more than 10 thousand constituencies where Hungarians can cast their ballots. With an equal representation of Fidesz and joint opposition officials at all ballot boxes, both parties will be able to worry less either about voter fraud occurring, or about being accused of committing voter fraud.

Featured photo illustration by Tamás Kovács/MTI


Array
(
    [1536x1536] => Array
        (
            [width] => 1536
            [height] => 1536
            [crop] => 
        )

    [2048x2048] => Array
        (
            [width] => 2048
            [height] => 2048
            [crop] => 
        )

)