Complaint on Austrian presidential election "increasingly likely": far-right leader

The leader of Austria's far-right Freedom Party (FPO), Heinz-Christian Strache, confirmed Thursday it was "increasingly likely" his party would challenge the result of the recent presidential election.

In the second-round runoff election held on May 22, FPO candidate Norbert Hofer narrowly lost to former Green party leader Alexander Van der Bellen by only some 30,000 votes.

Since then, a number of incidences of irregularities in the voting procedure have been claimed by the FPO, with some also confirmed by electoral authorities, though the irregularities were not deemed to have significantly impacted the final result.

According to a Krone Zeitung report, Strache has now engaged legal experts and believes a formal criminal complaint "is increasingly likely due to numerous irregularities."

More concretely, the party has claimed that in addition to the five to six districts across the country where postal vote envelopes had been opened without the presence of official election observers, numerous others may now also be similarly at fault.

He said the legal team was currently working on how to formulate the complaint, that "could make up more than the 30,000-vote lead of Van der Bellen."

Strache criticized the postal vote system, arguing it had led to many citizens losing confidence in an abuse-free voting system.

The Krone Zeitung quoted an electoral official as saying the complaint must be made directly to the Constitutional Court, who will then make a formal decision on whether the "facts present could lead to a reversal of the election results."

Should it not, the complaint will be dismissed. However, if this is proved to have been the case, the runoff election will be held again.

The deadline for a challenge to be made against the election result is June 8. Endit