HungarianElectoralFraud (or similar) can happen in any modern democracy (and Russia, of course - maybe a tradition in some places). It would be naive to think otherwise.
Almost all democracies use a low-tech voting method.
The Hungarian parliament elections are definitely based on a low-tech paper voting.
- 2013/XXXVI election law, a modern crime, was made by the "winner" Fidesz-KDNP government, for themselves, with a large number of extreme nonsense to tweak the system so even 35% support can be enough to win a district, and 133 seats enough to do virtually anything (change constitution, interfere with police and courts, get away with any crime, things like that; Nonsense ? Yes, but true)
- the shape of districts were redrawn so rural voters (more effected by television and radio nonsense propaganda) can outvote city citizens (who have developed some partial resistance and mental compensation against nonsense government propaganda flowing from all taps)
The election law is nonsense, especially since 2013
- heavily effecting 2014 elections, and allowing the criminal government to stay for +4 years
- However, nothing since 1989 indicated manipulation of votes by the hundreds of thousands
- this made people a bit unaware ... election just works by itself without flaws... We don't usually watch too carefully for something we perceive as "extremely low probability event"
After 7pm, some of the queues were still long (exactly as in 2014 !)
- Everyone assumed positively this was just stupidity
- but it was intentional, part of the game to allow some "anarchy" between 7pm and 11pm (before the results reported)
- computers crashing, complete information blockade of voting rooms, instead of publishing information as quickly as possible to make manipulation impossible.
At around 10pm (exact time depends on actual place, >10000 rooms involved) the election officers, several hours after completing their actual task, being blocked from outside contact for hours (for no good reason! this makes it even more frustrating), being up for 17 hours or more (woke up before 5am, obviously mostly exhausted, hungry, cranky), they were given some reports to sign.
Is this the way it has always been? / could it ever have been different? (Pink Floyd - A New Machine)
They signed. Tricky.
- Have they taken notes of the exact results for themselves when they counted ? Unfortunately, mostly no.
- Did they verify the numbers on the papers they sign ?
- they were pressurized in multiple ways, for certain
- Did they verify the numbers finally published on internet ?
- extremely surprising, but apparently almost none did. They simply believed the system working as "it should".
- ANY officer with original data (photos, personal notes, ...) please come up with (especially from opposition side).
- It would be essential to verify (they should have compared public data the next morning without any special request, but apparently most think "why should I have taken notes" ...
In 1956, 2 planes crashed [~ Grand Canyon]. How did the system fail ? The system did NOT fail. Investigators found: simply there was no system to prevent crashes at that time.
- preoccupation with normal cockpit duties, preoccupation with matters unrelated to cockpit duties, human physiological limits ... the main task to safely fly the plane was not successful.
- 2018 election: officers in charge did not copy the original data (did not even think it would be necessary), and finally (remember several hours have passed after they worked for 17 hours) they got hopelessly detached from it, without any possibility to verify (verification of the boxes/papers that spent days in criminal's hands cannot prove anything now, unfortunately).
Most election officers are not crypto-ethereum coders. Some are old, not as many use computers as young kids. Especially not when going home after an exhausting day.
The opposition almost certainly suspected that fraud is going on
- it was so obvious from the numbers reported slightly before midnight.
- however they didn't really have time to recover from the shock, and immediately understand where the trick is in the numbers;
- and almost certainly there is some large blackmail going on behind the scenes, which involves anyone criticizing the election law would be punished by revealing their crimes, and attacked by IRS (called NAV, in Hungary).
- These things actually happen in practice
Why ?
Given the extreme crimes of the Fidesz-KDNP government,
- commited mostly since 2010, exceeding anything conceivable by normal people
- and losing ALL of the last 6 small regional elections showing appr 35% support of Fidesz-KDNP (41% advertised by statistical institutions, but those contradicted by actual votings),
- knowing that if many citizens vote their regime is turned down,
- the chance of "losing" (getting 99 seats or less) seemed so likely and horrenous that manipulating the votes likely seemed the only solution (many of them would have gone to prison anyway, not much to lose), and than manipulating up to 133 seats to pass 2/3 needed for full power was logical.