But the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a nongovernmental organization working on human rights, warned that the voter tourism law “created a risk that multiple voters will reregister in single constituencies where a very close race is expected, with the intention to tilt the election outcome.” The Warsaw-based European Platform for Democratic Elections, an alliance of a dozen independent European citizen election observation organizations, has also signaled the danger of this practice, saying it “may not only distort election results but could potentially decide ‘battleground districts.’”
Extra Hungarian voters next door
On the hunt for additional votes and seats ahead of the 2014 election, Orbán offered citizenship and the right to vote to an estimated 2 million ethnic Hungarians living in neighboring countries. And over the years, hundreds of thousands living in territory that formed part of Hungary before World War I have taken up the offer.
These voters tend to be older and harbor irredentist grievances about Hungary’s territorial losses after the war. Up to around 90 percent of them tend to vote for Fidesz, which has plowed hundreds of millions of euros into their communities. And with nearly 500,000 registered to vote out of an eligible Hungarian electorate of around 8 million — they can make a difference.
What’s more, voting is easy for near-abroad Hungarians. They can vote by mail. “It’s been proven that there have been organizations closely tied to the governing party that have been going around collecting these votes, you know, envelopes and ballots to pass them on. This is documented,” said Péter Kramer, a veteran election observer who’s worked for the EU.
For Hungarian émigrés farther afield, who tend to be younger and favor opposition parties, voting is more arduous. They have to vote at embassies and consulates and clear a gauntlet of checks. Kramer told POLITICO the result is that there’s “a high turnout of about 50 percent with the near-abroad Hungarians, with 90 to 95 percent of their votes going to Fidesz. But the turnout for émigré Hungarians is low, at around 20 to 25 percent.”
Vote-buying (including potatoes)
When all of the above proves insufficient, there have been accusations of outright vote-buying. The phenomenon is sometimes termed “Krumpliosztás” — or potato distribution — in Hungarian, as critics say sometimes food is literally doled out to poorer districts such as Roma communities. In 2020, a far-right parliamentarian was fined for dumping a sack of potatoes on Orbán’s desk, effectively accusing him of buying votes.