Austrian Elections & Politics 2.0 (Presidential runoff re-vote: 4 Dec. 2016)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

He'd do that, but as he doesn't want to appear on an MI5 watchlist he'd rather you'd ask for him.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

oh lawd

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Often contests between 'atypical' choices end up looking strangely uniform, outside certain well established strongholds.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

More motivated electorate... this kind of thing can happen.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I also don't understand how the polls were so bad ...

Election for a largely symbolic post, weird set of candidates, one particular section of the electorate rather more motivated than the rest. Its horrible but not surprising.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well the Allied Denazification programme was not notably successful anywhere. The difference between German (both) and Austrian societies as regards their relationship to recent history is something that emerged in the decades that followed...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

But generally if you fill out a postal ballot you aren't wavering in the slightest.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Though much as Hofer was not a 'typical' candidate of the right, so also VdB was absolutely not a 'typical' candidate of the left.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

You people do realise that a 100% accurate count across a whole country is actually impossible?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

You people do realise that a 100% accurate count across a whole country is actually impossible?

That was not the problem. The count itself was 100% accurate and the Court did not find evidence of even a single vote being manipulated, etc.

The problem was the lax handling of the vote count by some election officials, such as:

* postal votes opened and counted on Sunday (election law says no earlier than 9am Monday)
* in some cases the votes were counted by people not belonging to the election commission
* in some cases, not all members of the election commission were present
* in some cases, only a member of the ÖVP counted all votes and the other commission members from the other parties just arrived later, signed that they were present and simply trusted the ÖVP-guy that he counted everything properly etc. etc.

In which case punish those officials and municipalities concerned, but don't overturn the result. A principle of English (and also Scottish) electoral law that should be adopted everywhere is that the result should only be overturned if whatever the complaint is about could have changed the outcome. This is an egregious waste of public money.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Hofer's campaign was more aggressive than in the first run around, I note...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Also a big defeat for Nigel Farage who said "he'd bet all his money on a Hofer-win" ...

ahahaha