Shortage of Opposition voting observers

A left-wing commentator finds it sad that the combined opposition parties are sending less representatives to oversee the elections than in past years.

In Népszava, Csaba Markotay recalls that last year parties delegated 32 thousand observers to the 10,200 polling stations, while this time, according to non-definitive data, they can only muster 20 thousand. (As of Thursday morning, the National Electoral Office reported 26 thousand party delegates. Registered opposition observers numbered somewhat more than 11 thousand.) Markotay doesn’t fear widespread vote-rigging, but remarks that there are always cases where it is not evident whether a certain number of votes are valid. And if one political side is not represented in the ballot-counting committee, the other side may be unable to resist the temptation to bend the result in its own favour. The 11 thousand opposition delegates will not be evenly distributed among the polling stations and there has been no co-ordination among the opposition parties. Markotay thinks there will be several thousand polling stations with no opposition scrutiny at all.

Tags: EP elections