On Sunday, December 4, Austria held a presidential election. The same election had been held in May 2016 but the results were cancelled because of voting irregularities with postal ballots. However, the new election had the same result as the first election. Alexnaider Van Der Bellen, a member of the Green Party, and formerly chair of the party, was elected. See this story.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
“Although the post is ceremonial in Austria” so not able to make policy
In Austria, ballots are counted by observers from the parties. They don’t necessarily do the clerical work, but oversee the process and certify the results. Austria traditionally holds elections on Sundays, and in-person votes were counted on the Sunday night.
Mail ballots had been increasingly used since they could be used without cause. A practice had evolved of counting them on Monday. Some of the observers had jobs, and didn’t actually witness the counting, but signed that they had, etc.
The Austrian Supreme Court ruled that the number of ballots illegally processed was greater than the margin of victory, and ordered a new election.
It is misleading to term the problem “voting irregularities”. There was no evidence of any irregularity in voting, or even in the counting of the votes, at least as far as the numbers for each candidate.
A second election was attempted a couple of months ago, but the glue on some of the mail ballots (or perhaps the security envelope) was defective, so that election was cancelled. This is the third attempt.
If California were Austria, the California Supreme Court would invalidate the election for President and require a new election.
Incidentally, the office of President in Austria is so important that they’ve done without for several months, instead functioning with a presidium of party leaders.
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