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

[Zanas]

Signature collection for presidential candidates starts next week and lasts around 1 month.

6.000 signatures are needed Austria-wide to be on the ballot. Unlike in parliamentary elections, there's no state quota for signatures.

Major party candidates who will have no problems collecting the signatures:

* Hundstorfer (SPÖ)
* Khol (ÖVP)
* Hofer (FPÖ)
* Van der Bellen (Greens)

Major candidates who will have problems collecting them, but will likely manage to be on the ballot:

* Griss (Indy)
* Lugner (Indy)

Minor candidates who are mentioned by the media, but who likely won't be on the ballot:

* Marschall (EU-Exit Party)
* Awadalla (Indy)

Are 6,000 signatures of citizens really that hard to gather, though ? In France you have to gather 500 signatures of elected officials, and we still get a dozen fukcing candidates each time !

[Zanas]

Well, Austria keeps being awful, Part LXVII.

Apart from that, no talks on turnout ? We'd been promised some 70-75 %, and it's just 60%, which is pretty lame in Austrian standards, even if it's actually 6.5 pts better than the last Presidential election of 2010. Clearly demotivation amongst governmental parties' troops, and who'd blame them ?

I wonder if something similar to the French regional election can happen, with a 10-pt increased turnout of broadly decent human beings coming in holding their nose to vote for the remaining candidate who is not an utter xenophobe ? Or has Austria gotten that awful ?

[Zanas]

Scandal for VdB

Known Islamist endorses Vdb on his website.

http://www.aymanwahdan.at/index.htm

In 2010 he wrote:

Reinige dein Haus von allen Kreuzen, denn sie sind Symbole der Christen. Und die Christen nutzen sie für ihre Interessen. Es gibt versteckte Kreuze in Kinderspielzeug, Kleidung und auch auf Teppichen

Also he posted many things like these in the past, although he didn't call for violence directly.

Source:

http://www.krone.at/Wien/Hass-Prediger_vergleicht_Kreuze_mit_dem_Teufel-Anti-Christen-Hetze-Story-223715

I'm sure Vdb will grant him some nice Social income goodies for this if he wins.

Could you quit posting racial hatred around here ? We already have Tender for that, and we kind of like him for other reasons so we tolerate him, but nobody likes you.

[Zanas]

Tender, I wonder if the extra high amount of postal ballots might lead to a different breakdown of how well VDB does with them, because maybe Hofer voters are part of the surge as well.

Might of course be possible, but VdB should get over 60% of the postal vote.

It looks like a bunch of Israeli people and children around an ambulance or something. Not that I care much about how it went, nor to defend Hofer all too much - but it seems the FPÖ-delegation was at least nearby at the scene when the woman terrorist was shot by Israeli security forces.

Except that she was not a terrorist...

But yes, I agree with your conclusion -- but it's definitely more Hofer than the ORF that has been making up things.

OK, then let's call her a "woman who was veiled and behaved very suspiciously and was shot in the leg by security forces after they repeatedly asked her to stop and after several warning shots".

When you describe her like this, one should ask oneself if Hofer himself wasn't the one who shot her...

I'm standing on my VdB win prediction. Hesitating between 52-48 or 54-46. I'll decide some time tomorrow on the exact number.

[Zanas]

Ok, so Austria is somehow worse than Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie. Appalling... Still think VdB pulls it out, but with no glory whatsoever, and democracy needs to be repealed asap.

[Zanas]

Well, this whole thing is depressing nonetheless. Still, I will now accept my accolades for the "French régionales 2015 effect" prediction, even if I'm not the closest to the final results among us.

[Zanas]

Sad Day for Europe, Europe Needs Big Change even if it can be harsh. And that original comment was out of line.

It's only the second ecologist Chief of State in the EU, probably one of the very very few in the whole world, and the first was a pro-Russian Latvian elected by 55 MPs out of 100, whereas Van der Bellen wins a relatively high turnout popular vote, even if barely. Why is that not a big change ? Change is only change towards fascism ?

[Zanas]

If 16 year olds didn't have the vote would Hofer have won?

ORF.at has motives plus demographic data here (obviously in German; scroll down to "Wahlverhalten nach Alter" (fourth-to-last) or "Wahlverhalten nach Alter und Geschlecht" (third-to-last)), which tells us Van der Bellen won under-29s by 54%. While that does not say us anything specifically about 16-18-year olds, we can probably assume they voted as under-29s in general, so given the extreme closeness of the race, yes, it could very well be.

I wouldn't be so sure. Green leaning often is correlated with college education level. 16-18 would not yet be affected by this culture, and could still be a bit more of the rebellious nihilist sort, hence tilt a bit more FPÖ. Heck at 16 I was a Proudhonist, and by 24 I was a somewhat leftist social-democrat. (I'm back to being some kind of an anarchist, but for other reasons )

[Zanas]

Am I the only one seeing a problem with a party named the NEOs? or that term doesn't hold the neo-nazi meaning in Austria?

I think we discussed it back when it was founded. The point was : very few people actually think of neo-Nazis when reading NEOS, in Austria or elsewhere, except one particular place or country, but I cannot recall which. Maybe yours.

[Zanas]

I put the probability of a nation-wide revote at 0.1%.

[Zanas]

It was never higher than 0.1 %, honestly.

[Zanas]

Nuke this country already.

[Zanas]

It is however a reassuring testimony of this Constitutional Court's independence.

[Zanas]

Good article:

http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/07/25/austria-freedom-party-populism-lesson-far-right/?printpage=true

Why is it so anti Hofer ..

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Hofer is more Center-Right than Far-Right..

Just... stop.

[Zanas]

Oh man, this is getting ridiculous now ...

Constitutional experts have now found a reason why even the runoff re-vote could be contested again in a close election:

http://kurier.at/politik/stichwahl-werden-30-000-waehler-rechtswidrig-ausgeschlossen/212.145.048

Election law says the number of eligible voters has to be the same for the 1st round and the runoff (and even in case of a re-vote because of a tied runoff or a contested election like we have it now).

But here's the "problem":

The first round was held on April 24, the re-vote on Oct. 2 - which is almost half a year later.

During this half year, about 34.000 people died but another 32.000 would have reached age 16 and would therefore be eligible to vote. But they cannot vote, because of the first round cutoff date.

Obviously, the election law is pretty clear - but if the margin is close, who knows ?

To stay perfectly on topic here, it seems pretty obvious to me that no voter who didn't take part in the first round of an election - and by taking part I mean being eligible to vote - should be eligible to take part in the runoff that was delivered as a result of said first round. The circumstance that this runoff should happen after several month later is absolutely irrelevant to the point, in a legal point of view. Of course, politically and philosophically, the matter could be different.

[Zanas]

Oh man, this is getting ridiculous now ...

Constitutional experts have now found a reason why even the runoff re-vote could be contested again in a close election:

http://kurier.at/politik/stichwahl-werden-30-000-waehler-rechtswidrig-ausgeschlossen/212.145.048

Election law says the number of eligible voters has to be the same for the 1st round and the runoff (and even in case of a re-vote because of a tied runoff or a contested election like we have it now).

But here's the "problem":

The first round was held on April 24, the re-vote on Oct. 2 - which is almost half a year later.

During this half year, about 34.000 people died but another 32.000 would have reached age 16 and would therefore be eligible to vote. But they cannot vote, because of the first round cutoff date.

Obviously, the election law is pretty clear - but if the margin is close, who knows ?

To stay perfectly on topic here, it seems pretty obvious to me that no voter who didn't take part in the first round of an election - and by taking part I mean being eligible to vote - should be eligible to take part in the runoff that was delivered as a result of said first round. The circumstance that this runoff should happen after several month later is absolutely irrelevant to the point, in a legal point of view. Of course, politically and philosophically, the matter could be different.

How does it work in France ?

I'm not really sure, because in the 2007 election the number of eligible voters was roughly the same in the 1st round and the runoff, but in 2012 the number was significantly higher in the runoff ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_presidential_election,_2007#Results

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_presidential_election,_2012#Results

I'd actually be in favour of updating the voter list for the re-vote, even if the election law says that authorities doesn't have to do it.

Because there's a central registry of voters, it would also not be too hard to add the new 16-year olds and remove the olds who died.

Well I'll be damned ! Indeed, in 2012 the number of registered voters actually increased by 38,000 voters between rounds.

However, article L57 of our electoral code clearly says that only voters duely registered for the first round can take part in the second. Only exception is article L34 of said code, which allows voters who consider they have been unrighteously kept away from registry in the first round to take the matter to the local judge between rounds, and said judge can register them to vote in the runoff if they should indeed have been duely registered from the first round on.

But that would mean 38,000 law suits between rounds in the local courts, and I think that would have been noticed... So I'm investigating and will keep in touch !

Normally, the number should go down between rounds, because French officials do cross the deceased out of the registry between rounds.

[Zanas]

Interesting fact : in Eastern France where I lived for a few years, especially in Moselle, people actually said "faire bleu" to mean "not going to school or work". Nobody in the rest of France understands because it's a German calque. I was however not aware that it also meant "having a hangover", but I don't think it's the primary sense, maybe it specialized in that sense in Austrian.

[Zanas]

If I were an Austrian constitutional lawyer right now, I would already be starting writing my appeal on the Dec 4th election for, you know, the fact that some people will apparently be voting in a runoff produced by a first round where they were not qualified to vote. It makes absolutely no sense.

Oh, and also just to keep on trollin' baby.

And I'm 100% with ag, exceptionally : you can't count all the votes nationwide anywhere. Irregularities happen. It's a human process. The Dec 4th election will also produce irregularities, it's bound to. What will happen next ? Appeal ? Revote ? I've rarely seen so much electoral insanity, and it's absolutely hilarious. Well, apart from the waste of tens of million euros who could rather help refugees settle in. (#triggered)

[Zanas]

If I were an Austrian constitutional lawyer right now, I would already be starting writing my appeal on the Dec 4th election for, you know, the fact that some people will apparently be voting in a runoff produced by a first round where they were not qualified to vote. It makes absolutely no sense.

Yes, but about 30,000 people who voted in the original vote have already died of natural causes and so their votes have gone to the big ballot box in the sky...that already makes it impossible to perfectly replicate the first runoff!

Yes, but that happens all the time. A few hundred or thousand people die between a first round and a runoff, and that really can't be avoided, but intellectually, letting new people participate in what is supposed to be the same election is disturbing, at least to a psephomaniac and law professional like me.

[Zanas]

If I were an Austrian constitutional lawyer right now, I would already be starting writing my appeal on the Dec 4th election for, you know, the fact that some people will apparently be voting in a runoff produced by a first round where they were not qualified to vote. It makes absolutely no sense.

Yes, but about 30,000 people who voted in the original vote have already died of natural causes and so their votes have gone to the big ballot box in the sky...that already makes it impossible to perfectly replicate the first runoff!

Yes, but that happens all the time. A few hundred or thousand people die between a first round and a runoff, and that really can't be avoided, but intellectually, letting new people participate in what is supposed to be the same election is disturbing, at least to a psephomaniac and law professional like me.

On the one hand you might be right: People who were not allowed to vote in the first round, should also not be allowed to vote in the runoff, for purity reasons and so that the result won't be challenged again.

But on the other hand, there will be a new amended law with a constitutional 2/3 majority which will allow these first-time voters to take part in the election and even the FPÖ will support this. So, it's definitely legitimate and will almost certainly be upheld by the Constitutional Court if someone dares to appeal again ...

Yeah I guess in that sense you can argue it was somehow the untainted will of the people's representatives, so it should be alright.