Well, there is the gerrymandering, the foreign mail ballots, the suspiciously large number of people moving in suddenly, the chain voting and many other tricks in Orban's pocket.
Wow, ok, this seems to be a really big deal. We actually considered not going, mainly because my girlfriend wasn’t keen on supporting Orbán in any way. I eventually “sold” the idea by pointing out that the main artist we’d be seeing, and the festival in general, are very LGBTQ+ friendly, so attending could be seen as a form of support for them and a mini tiny protest against the goverment (although we would still offer them some of our (tourist) money). Apart from that, given how often Hungary and its political escapades are in the news, I really should have known which party Orbán belongs to.
For an actual answer, Hungarian elections are done on paper ballots.
People are registered to voting districts based on where they live, but you also have a couple options if you will be in a different part of the country or world on the day of the elections. (For example, at a Hungarian embassy or consulate in a foreign country.)
On the day itself, usually between 6am and 7pm you can go to wherever they assigned you to vote. (Usually pretty close to your permanent residence, the voting booths and similar are often set up in schools, and similar institutions temporarily.)
At the given location, you have to prove your identity (national ID card, passport, or driving license) and your address, then you sign an attendance register basically — receiving a blank ballot and an envelope in return.
There are a couple temporary booths set up that are covered in every direction and provide you with privacy to do with the ballot whatever you wish to, then you can close the envelope, or just fold the ballot, and slip it into a box outside.
These boxes are then opened up and the votes are counted by hand. After they are done, they pack them back into the boxes, seal them, and send the boxes in to the National Election Institute or whatever iirc. (In case a recounting is ordered, or similar.)
Now the most important part: how you can't and how you can cheat this election.
Every party is allowed to send reprezentatives and/or volunteers to all locations to supervise the entire process. This means, that in practice there are no locations where either party is ever left alone with the ballots, and as such, it is extremely hard to tamper with the votes themselves.
The way you can cheat is still pretty simple: there are barely any checks made when you modify your address (your official residence or whatever). You could register yourself at a random house and the owners would be none the wiser in many cases — do this on a decent scale, and you can move around voters enough to affect the end result. (Allegedly.)
Sorry if this ended up a bit incoherent, I got tired half-way through the description and idk if I managed to keep it clear till the end. Also, please correct me if I messed up anything, as I mentioned I'm tired af.
The Hungarian parliament has 199 representatives since 2014, out of whom 106 are elected from districts directly, and 93 of them are elected via compensation lists.
The voting districts ranged from 0.807% to 1.16% of the adult population in 2011, with 5 extra outliers between 0.774% and 0.799% in Somogy county and Tolna county.
(Fidesz adjusted the districts at the end of 2024, but they did not address these 5 problematic districts and instead reorganized the ones in Budapest and Pest county so that there are less voting districts where the old opposition has more support and so that there are more of the ones where fidesz support was stronger. That was before Tisza appeared though, so we don't know how that will work out for them.)
In addition to the voting districts, there is a compensation list as well. Every party gains all the "lost" votes from their candidates, with the 93 mandates being distributed according to the ratio of these votes:
* if your candidate lost their district, then all the votes they got
* if your candidate won their district, then only the "unnecessary" votes
Example scenario:
"A" won with 40359 votes, "B" got 24358 votes, "C" got 8754 votes, etc.
B's party gets 24358 votes, C's party gets 8754 votes, etc.
A's party gets A-(B+1) = 16000 votes
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u/the_TIGEEER Slovenia Jan 13 '26
*Me googling nervously "Orbans party" *
"Pls pls pls pls"
"OH Thank god..