Austrian presidental election to be reheld.

[classical_hero]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/01/austrian-presidential-election-result-overturned-and-must-be-held-again-hofer-van-der-bellen

Austria’s Freedom party will get another go at providing the first far-right president in the European Union, after the country’s constitutional court annulled the result of May’s presidential election.

The court president, Gerhart Holzinger, announced on Friday that the run-off vote, in which Norbert Hofer of the Freedom party (FPÖ) narrowly lost to Green-backed Alexander Van der Bellen, would have to be repeated across the whole country after an investigation revealed irregularities in the count of the vote in several constituencies.

This is certainly something that is interesting since it hasn't been done before but the court ruled that there are enough inconsistencies to possibly affect the outcome. Surprised this hasn't been talked about before.

 

[Bootstoots]

This is a very interesting outcome, and I suspect it puts Hofer as a slight to moderate favorite to win the rerun. The court did not find outright fraud and it appears to have been mostly procedural irregularities that would not have substantially changed the vote count by anything like the 30,000 needed to change the outcome, so I am surprised that the election result was overturned.

The Austrian president is mostly ceremonial, but he can call early elections, right? Are there any other powers that could be used theoretically, even if in practice they are currently not used?

 

[Kyriakos]

Austria producing a far-right leader? This must be a first ( ).

 

[plarq]

You know former Austria-Hungary is a hotbed for far-rightism.

Isn't Austria severed from other parts of former AH due to cold war?

 

[ori]

Those mostly procedural irregularities are sufficient in scope as to make the results questionable - not because there was any proven election fraud but because the way it was handled would make it impossible to detect any such fraud - as such the ruling is just fine. If election officials mishandle the vote count in a manner that makes it impossible to verify then it does not matter wether fraud is proven or not its not a democratic vote. Of course its a boost to the far right which can now run around claiming that fraud prevented their guy from winning - but then again I am not all that sure that the opposite outcome would have changed that.
I just love that the main argument in defence of the results was that yes we did not bother adhering to the law but that is mostly because we haven't done so in the past either.

 

[Bootstoots]

So what is going on that prevents recounts from happening? Are the ballots destroyed or something?

 

[ori]

ballots were opened by people not cleared to do so - counts were not done in the presence of the required election observers, in some cases without any witnesses present, transcripts of election comittee meetings were handed in of meetings that did not occur or which had been signed by members prior to being written - so the chain of custody fails, its utterly impossible to know whether all ballots received were counted, whether any were changed or discarded, whether all ballots counted were validly received / fulfilled all requirements for mail-in ballots or even whether all counted ballots were retained. The whole point of having regulations like who is allowed to open ballots, who needs to be present etc. is to make sure no mischief can occur - they way it was done just means people need to trust the count with no verification possible.

Edit: note this is all informed just from reading the obviously completely unbiased German reporting on the whole thing...
Also: its a complete mess as I strongly feel that Austrians only have a choice between the blatantly undemocratic FPÖ candidate (who now will now be one third of an acting president starting next week by the way) and a blatantly undemocratic Green candidate (whom I like very much for policy reasons but who vowed to as president never allow a FPÖ chancellor to take office, essentially vowing to block a conceivable albeit unlikely majority vote by the Austrian parliament and not entirely unlikely plurality vote by voters after the next general elections). Having people on both sides vow to disregard the voting public if they are not voting according to their own idea of what the correct outcome is a precarious sign for democracy - having either one as president is a bad outcome (not that the other candidates were any better from what I gather and van der Bellen would generally be a decent president I expect).