In an interview with Der Standard newspaper, University of Vienna professor Theo Öhlinger also said that two of the complaints in the 150-page document filed with the constitutional court were “very serious”. One of those complaints is about postal votes being counted in some places by municipal officers rather than the electoral commission as a whole. Öhlinger added that it was also a serious concern that interim results were being published online before the polling stations had closed. The run-off presidential election on May 22nd was won by the independent Alexander Van der Bellen, the former leader of the Green party, who defeated the anti-immigration Freedom Party candidate Norbert Hofer by a margin of only 30,863 votes.
Preliminary results on the Sunday initially suggested Hofer had a slight lead, but after 700,000 postal votes were counted, Van der Bellen came out in front in the end with a slim 0.6% lead.
The election was one of the tightest in Austria’s history and in the weeks following some Freedom Party politicians and their supporters complained of irregularities, including the fact that postal votes had been counted too early.
Full Article: Expert: Austria election rerun is ‘likely’ – The Local.
