Inside Track
Was the Austrian Election “Stolen”?
The razor-thin election result in Austria’s presidential race on May 22 was heralded by EU politicians and the establishment media worldwide as a hair’s-breadth “escape” from a “far-right” takeover. The candidates were “far right” Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party, who called for a stop to the unrestricted “refugee” migration into the EU, and the “moderate” socialist Green Party candidate Alexander van der Bellen. The final result was determined by postal votes, with nearly 900,000 Austrians — 14 percent of the voters — casting their ballot by mail this year. On May 23, the tabulation of the mail-in vote was announced to be in van der Bellen’s favor, by a mere 31,026 votes. According to election officials, van der Bellen had squeaked out a 50.3 percent of the vote total to Hofer’s 49.7 percent.
There were immediate charges by some Freedom Party supporters that the election had been “stolen,” which may indeed be accurate. The Elections Department of Austria’s Ministry of the Interior announced May 25 that it is investigating “irregularities” involving tens of thousands of postal votes, particularly those concentrated in four towns. “The Austrian Ministry of the Interior has announced an investigation into ‘voting irregularities in four towns during the recent presidential election,” the New Observer reported on May 25. “In all cases, the FPÖ’s [Freedom Party’s] candidate Norbert Hofer won the ‘live’ votes, but lost when the postal votes were counted.”
Regardless of the outcome of the official postal vote fraud investigation, it is clear that the prospect of Norbert Hofer’s presidential run was a matter of great alarm in the higher circles of power inside the European Union. Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, was especially abusive and intrusive in the lead-up to the election. “The prospect of seeing the far-right win forces me to say that I don’t like them,” Juncker told French newspaper Le Monde on May 20. “The Austrians don’t like to hear this but I don’t care: there is no debate or dialogue with the far-right.”
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