Re-run of Austrian presidential vote postponed due to faulty ballot<\/p>\n
A re-run of Austria\u2019s presidential election that was due to take place on October 2 has been postponed, Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka said on Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are going to request that parliament approves a postponement of the election,” Sobotka told reporters. Possible new dates are November 27 or December 4, he said.<\/p>\n
The postponement came after some postal voters complained of faulty seals on ballot papers.<\/p>\n
Austria has been without a president since July 8 when Heinz Fischer stepped down. He was replaced on an interim basis by the speaker of parliament and two deputy speakers.<\/p>\n
The last election result from May was annulled after Austria’s highest court in July upheld claims of procedural irregularities made by the narrowly defeated far-right.<\/p>\n
That vote, a run-off after the first round in April, saw independent ecologist Alexander Van der Bellen beat Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party (FPOe) by just 31,000 votes.<\/p>\n
The FPOe has stoked concerns about recent record immigration, and should Hofer eventually win it would make Austria the first country in Europe since 1945 to elect a far-right president.<\/p>\n
The role of the Austrian president is largely \u2013 but not entirely \u2013 ceremonial, and a victory by Hofer would be a major boost to Europe’s other surging populist movements.<\/p>\n
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Re-run of Austrian presidential vote postponed due to faulty ballot A re-run of Austria\u2019s presidential election that was due to take place on October 2 has been postponed, Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka said on Monday. \u201cWe are going to request that parliament approves a postponement of the election,” Sobotka told reporters. Possible new dates are November 27 or December 4,… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions\/134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}