FPÖ: “Countless” Election Fraud Cases

RSS Feed

FPÖ: “Countless” Election Fraud Cases

May 30th, 2016

Awake Goy

The leader of Austria’s Freedom Party, Heinz-Christian Strache, has confirmed that his party is investigating “countless” cases of electoral fraud with regard to last week’s presidential elections in that country.

Speaking over the weekend, Strache said that his party was “going to get the countless indications (of irregularities) looked at by an independent, neutral body and then decide whether to challenge the result.”

austrian-elections

“There are lots of indications coming from voters, and so far five criminal complaints where the law was obviously broken,” he told the Kronen-Zeitung newspaper.

“The result of the election could change,” he added, referring to the fact that the FPÖ’s candidate, Norbert Hofer, lost by just 31,026 votes after the highly suspicious postal votes were counted.

Before those votes were tallied, Hofer had a 144,000 lead in the “live” election day voting results, and the communist-Green candidate had to win 60 percent of the postal ballots in order to overtake the FPÖ.

Although theoretically possible, such a result would be highly unusual and completely contrary to the rest of the country’s voting patterns. Yet, as is now known, this is precisely what happened, allowing the communist-Green candidate to win the election.

Strache told the Kronen-Zeitung that it was “still too early to judge. But there was a turnout in Waidhofen an der Ybbs of 147 percent, and we have solid evidence of a number of Viennese voters who cast votes twice.

“The very least we are going to do is have all this checked and verified by an independent body.”

Asked by the Kronen-Zeitung if this would actually change the result, Strache said that this “was exactly the question. Because if the irregularities concern over 30,000 votes, then of course this will change the final result.”

He said that “democratic election results have to be respected, but they must be grounded in law and rules.”

The Kronen-Zeitung then asked the FPÖ leader why he always talked of “economic migrants” instead of having “genuine compassion for refugees.”

Strache said that he had genuine compassion for people who fear for their lives and who are on the run, but the “difference is that of the people who have come [to Austria], a high, predominant proportion are not refugees [as defined] under the Geneva Convention.”

Last week Austrian authorities said they were investigating several cases of alleged election irregularities. These allegations concerned postal votes being opened for counting too early, and being left open all night.

The FPÖ will make its decision known within the next few days, sources said.

The narrow defeat has not affected the FPÖ’s standing in the polls ahead of the next general elections in the country, due in 2018.

In a Gallup poll published on Sunday by the Österreich daily newspaper, the FPÖ was in first place at 34 percent, while the Social Democrats (SPÖ) of Chancellor Christian Kern were at 24 percent, and their center-right coalition partners the People’s Party (ÖVP) was at 21 percent.