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Comment by xiphias2 | Hacker News Reader

That software bug made a lot of Hungarians miss elections today in Netherlands :(

For those outside of Europe, could you explain how this works? Are these Hungarian citizens living abroad who are able to somehow vote from polling places accessible by train within the Netherlands? Is this an EU organized thing?

Only in Amsterdam inside Netherlands after waiting a long line. At the same time Hungarians in Romania could vote by mail and the government was using Fidesz to collect the votes and threw out votes of the opposition.

The soft dictatorship works very well, Hungary will go even more down in the future. I'll probably leave Hungary before Hungary leaves EU/NATO and gets into a war.

Voting by mail is insecure? This is very troubling.

It's not simply voting by mail, it's voting by mail by not even using official the post office in Romania.

I know that you're probably refering to US, but I don't make any comment about it, because I don't live there, so I don't know what really happened in US.

In Romania some people found partially burned ballots with only opposition votes next to a garbage bin before the elections ended. The proofs of voter fraud couldn't have been clearer. It's supposed to be a scandal, but nothing will happen about it.

https://hungarytoday.hu/discarded-burnt-postal-ballots-scand...

Well that is just an isolated case. There is simply no evidence to support the baseless conspiracy theory that postal voting results in widespread fraud. This has been well established by the experts and journalists.

Clearly the quality of the audit matters and that differs massively between countries. Nobody disputes the validity and integrity of postal voting in Australia for example.

> There is simply no evidence to support the baseless conspiracy theory that postal voting results in widespread fraud.

You're applying US culture-war stuff to another country and culture.

Who exactly would Hungary get into a war with? It borders Slovakia (EU member), Austria (EU member), Croatia (EU member), Serbia, Romania (EU member), Ukraine, and Poland (EU member). Is it your contention that it's going to invade the EU? Or Serbia? Or Ukraine? Or is Hungary going to use its awesome force projection capabilities to get into a war with a country that it doesn't border?

“Beat them with sarcasm, not arguments” — James Looney

They need to travel to the embassy to vote.

Most countries (even non EU ones) allow its citizens residing in foreign countries to vote in national elections at its embassies.

So Hungarians residing in Netherlands could have been able to vote at Hungarian embassies/consulates in Netherlands (if they made it to the embassy).

Sometimes even local stuff. U.S. states, our provincial government level, have processes in place to account for Americans living abroad to vote in state and local elections. It’s guaranteed by law, I think. Our states handle all voting on behalf of the federal government anyway (registration, voting day operations, counts, all often under the misleadingly named office of a Secretary of State), so it’s a natural consequence of our structure. It is nice to live abroad as if you were still at your last physical address for voting purposes, though, and usually not notice a big difference. I think it’s implied that those of us who have done it intend to come back, in the system’s thinking, but I think everyone understands the relevance of their vote according to their situation and beliefs.

We’re of course all too familiar with this process from several consequential court cases deliberating its efficacy and merit in generational memory. Whether it’s sensible has been argued with elections on the line.

A shocking thing for me is that if you're an American living abroad registered to vote in California you're allowed to vote by email (well technically fax, but there's a DoD email alias you can send your scanned ballot PDF to and someone will print it out and fax it, which counts). Oh, and if you vote any ballot this way other than a write-in for federal offices you might also get a residency audit and have to pay California's personal income tax (which doesn't recognize any US tax treaties). You're not allowed to vote by fax or email if you don't have a non-US address.

In SC, you vote in a web app if you live out of the country.

So you are saying it's a plot to change the election's outcome?

edit: It was a joke. :/

I don't think so. Anyways the same dictatorship (Viktor Orban) got full control again of the country.

Were the elections illegitimate ? I'm a complete outsider to hungarian politics so I'm not sure if this is hyperbole... but talking about how a dictatorship has been reelected again doesn't make sense to me. Unless elections in Hungary are just theather, and results are just faked like in Syria for example.

Outright dictatorships like North Korea are getting rarer. It's more common nowadays for de-facto dictatorships to maintain an appearance of democracy by actually holding elections but either having no viable candidates other than the incumbent (e.g. Russia), or by systematically banning or even murdering all opposition (e.g. Belarus). Hungary isn't quite that far gone yet. It still has elections that technically meet the requirements of EU membership. I don't know any more details though.

It's a relatively free election, there's a strong incumbent bias that undoubtedly helps him win but there's no evidence the entire thing is rigged. Dictators can be popular, the best example is Napoleon.

The government made extra payments to their typical supporters like pensioners and rural areas. Economically strong regions and younger professionals pay the bill and are free to vote against, but they remain a minority.

Yes, but the question was about Hungary, not the UK.

Though since there's no election for a while and they don't apparently get elected based on promises delivered, just promised made, they haven't shied away from breaking the pensioner-bait promises anyway for this year and removing the triple lock (pensions rise at least as fast as the largest of inflation, earnings or 2.5%).

> they haven't shied away from breaking -- promises anyway for this year

Non-election year actions, while unironically promising that they are going to give away money in the upcoming election year.

Each opposition party gets 5 minutes per 4 year election cycle by the state controlled media (and a lot of other media was bought from stolen EU money).

I dare you to watch 5 minutes of news on the government media channel (the only channels that can be accessed in the free TV tear, that poor people are able to watch) and say that it's not rigged.

4 year ago the joke party used that 5 minutes for being a chicken to show the absurdity of the situation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcpuwIl-610&t=28s

If Napoleon, who ruled hundreds of years ago is the best example you know, there must be something in not allowing any person to stay for 16 years in power (especially because he just had 9 years)

All your saying can be described as a "strong incumbent bias that undoubtedly helps him win." International poll watchers agree, the elections themselves are fair but the blurred separation of party and state leads to an undue advantage. 2014, but I don't see evidence of the situation having changed. http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/hungary/121098?download=...

Maybe I should have said "fully rigged." Real opposition candidates do get to run, they just have almost no shot of victory. And it's possible that if they did have a shot, the elections would be outright rigged.

Napoleon was my example of a popular dictator, I didn't want to use other examples as people will debate whether they're dictators. I never said that's a good thing, Napoleon was horrible despite remaining popular in France.

> I dare you to watch 5 minutes of news on the government media channel (the only channels that can be accessed in the free TV tear, that poor people are able to watch) and say that it's not rigged.

This is not true. While most of the channels are government media, you also get RTL, which is very much opposition media. Source: https://mindigtv.hu/muszaki-segitseg-1/csatornak/csatornakio...

Thanks, I didn't know that.

You must never joke on HN, this is a SERIOUS site where SERIOUS 10x people talk about SERIOUS things like.... uhhh.... playing Doom in Grafana.

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