Kristóf Gál

At first -and possibly also at second- glance Hungarian politics seems very adversarial, and it is rather difficult to find issues which enjoy support from a broad spectrum of parties. By law a general election had to take place this year (as the previous one was held in 2018), but this was not the only occasion voters would have had to approach their local polling stations, as Parliament ordered there was also a referendum to be held this year about so called “child protection”, relating to a law passed in 2021.

As the year 2021 proved a challenge to most European Governments in tackling Covid-19, it is no surprise that their general agendas faced a backlog, this a possible explanation as to why Parliament only decided on the referendum on the 30th of November 2021, relatively close to, but on a separate occasion to the general elections in April 2022. An opposition MP therefore sought to amend the Act on the Initiative for a referendum, the European citizens' initiative and the referendum procedure, because it did not allow for a referendum to be held on the day of and also 41 days prior to a general election, European and local elections. The proposal won universal acclaim, without a single vote against it. Holding both a general election and referendum on a separate occasion could have had two potentially negative effects.

The first one is really obvious as it concerns the budget, it is estimated that -held on its own- this particular referendum would have cost around 7 billion Hungarian forints, that is more than €17 million on present exchange rate, which is a substantial amount of money to be saved. It was argued by all sides that a potential “one day – two votes” system could easily save a large portion of the €17M.

The other negative effect is concerning not the monetary, but the personal level, as the Covid-19 pandemic was and to a point still is a health hazard, so any measures which could reduce the transmission of the virus can be deemed positive, and it can be argued, that keeping both the general election and the referendum on the same day resulted in voters only having to queue and wait once in environments where the risk of transmission is potentially higher than usual. In 2020 a French study regarding the municipal elections found an increase hospitalized population due to the polls, however this concerned areas which already had higher than usual transmission statistics. So, in this regard it should be considered that a potential uprise in cases caused by the first vote -whichever it is- will be followed by another increase in case numbers caused by that vote, so unifying the two occasions might not be all that bad of an idea after all.   Only having to deal with the procedure once can therefore cut costs and to a point relieve the mounting pressure on healthcare professionals. As a counterpoint it should be considered that this particular referendum was one which had multiple questions to be decided by the electorate (namely four) and the in the general election they had to vote for both a national party list (or nationalities) and constituency candidates, which slowed down the electoral process, which could have contributed to an increased virus transmission figure.

Another important factor is the result, as the “child protection” referendum ended up being  invalid. When groped with something as significant as a general election, it is no surprise that the latter will take the spotlight, which is expected, but somewhat unfortunate because to a point it can belittle the significance of a referendum. (Applicable only if there was any significance to begin with.) And that can pose as a potential danger, because often these referendum questions are “hot topics”, so postponing them to wait for a joint occasion to first and foremost cut costs and prevent the spread of virus transmission can take the wind out of a referendum’s sails, leading it down a one-way path to irrelevancy. The hot topic of summer 2021 is less relevant in April 2022, it is no surprise that over 20% of all votes cast in the referendum were invalid.

As things currently stand this will not be the first and last joint vote in Hungary, because after an amendment to the  Fundamental Law in 2022 European Parliament and local elections will be held jointly, every 5 years. All the cost cutting arguments mentioned above also apply to this method (9 to 10 billion HUF can be saved this way), and if the pandemic is still a threat in 2024 this can help reduce the spread of the virus. There is one huge downside though: current local governments and mayors have a mandate until October 2024, and the joint elections are expected to be held in May 2024, this can lead to cities where the mayor and local assembly members are voted out in May as they no longer enjoy the confidence of the electorate but can still remain office until almost half a year later.

September 2022

__________________________________________________________

The views expressed above belong to the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Centre for Social Sciences.