It is the conviction of many that Fidesz owes its 2018 victory in the general elections (or at least the two-thirds majority) to the registering of false residential addresses. Although Kispalád (for example) has seen a 150% increase in its population in the last seven years and the press has uncovered several similar cases in the past few years, no one knows exactly how many false residential addresses have been registered with a fraudulent aim. We will never know the exact numbers, but a recent verdict of the Metropolitan Regional Court should provide some clarity. The competent State Secretariat of the Ministry of Interior is now obligated by a final judgement to release the requested data to the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU) and to Political Capital (PC). Let’s see what this is all about!

Many people have received unsolicited phone calls from pollsters and parties, even though they banned the public telephone directories from publishing their telephone numbers. We'll take a look at some of the typical violations that have occurred and tell you what you can do if your information is misused in the campaign.

A mayoral candidate overseeing the polling on the spot; a “polling booth” made out of a cardboard box in Budapest; rural candidates chased down the street; burned ballot papers; and various creative forms of vote-buying—we have collected the most extreme cases of violation reported on our election hotline during the municipal elections.

While the police descended on András Pikó's 8th District campaign team because of a photo that showed nothing more than activists leaning over papers, the clearly legible photos made of the “Kubatov List” did not merit an investigation. On Election Day, opposition activists chased groups of people presumably involved in the organized transport of electors and even found a packet that looked like a bunch of ballot papers in a taxi, but the police had not acted. Why did they react to these situations differently?

Amnesty International Hungary, Hungarian Helsinki Committee, Mérték Media Monitor, Háttér Society, Hungarian Civil Liberties Union and Tansparency International Hungary elaborated a joint NGO reaction paper to rebut the Hungarian government’s response to the Reasoned Proposal in the Article 7 procedure against Hungary.

The action against the act stigmatizing Hungarian civil society organizations has entered a new phase: on 22 October the Court of Justice of the European Union will conduct a public hearing on the case.