Electoral system of Hungary

Condorcet methods Positional voting Cardinal voting Quota-remainder methods Approval-based committees Fractional social choice Semi-proportional representation By ballot type Pathological response Strategic voting Paradoxes of majority rule Positive results The electoral system of Hungary is the set of voting methods and rules used in Hungary, including mainly the system for electing members of the National Assembly (parliamentary elections):[1] and local government elections.

[7] According to critics, the new electoral system essentially makes it impossible for parties with separate lists to nominate common individual candidates, because in this case the fractional votes are lost, and this is an indefensible provision specifically aimed at hindering the unity of the opposition.

Kovács and Stumpf pointed out in their study that the current system shows a greater tendency towards disproportionality.

The internal factors are: 1. the change in the proportions of individual and list mandates, 2. the introduction of "premiumization" for the winner, 3. the termination of the independent compensation list; external factor: the evolution of the power relations of the parties at national and district level.

Although Századvég and Nézőpont tried in vain to refute the gerrymandering effect, the data from the 2014 elections showed a significant correlation between the popularity of Fidesz and the number of constituency voters.

[11] In 2021, six Hungarian opposition parties (DK, Jobbik, LMP, MSZP, Momentum, Párbeszéd) held national primaries on the occasion of their joint participation in the 2022 parliamentary elections.

In settlements with more than 10,000 inhabitants (and capital districts) mandates can be obtained in individual constituencies and from compensation lists in the mixed election system.

A compensation list can be submitted by the organization that nominates candidates in more than half of the individual constituencies.

During the compensation, the fractional votes cast by each nominating organization for the unelected candidates in the individual constituencies must be taken into account.

The representative mandates are awarded to the candidates with the most votes, in the event of a tie, a draw will be held.

The lists are allocated seats in the general assembly in proportion to the total votes obtained in the entire county (or in the capital before 2014).

A minority local government can be formed by the minority for whose candidates at least one hundred voters cast valid votes in settlements with a population greater than ten thousand, and at least fifty voters in those with a population smaller than this.

The number of mandates specified in the legal act of the European Union – 21 according to these rules – is allocated in Hungary.

The National Assembly - if the referendum gives rise to a legislative obligation - is obliged to create a law corresponding to the decision of the valid and successful referendum within one hundred and eighty days from the day of the vote, which decision is binding on the Parliament for three years from the promulgation of the law.

At the initiative of the President of the Republic, the Government or one hundred thousand voters, the Parliament can order a national referendum.[forrás?]

In the course of its procedure, the National Election Commission is obliged to request the opinion of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences on the existence of the legal conditions.

The legislature of the State was the Diet (Országgyűlés in Hungarian, meaning Country Assembly), which was convened by the monarch, and they had the right to dissolve it.

The members of the upper table (which later became the House of Magnates) were the nobles and high priests, by birth or office.

For the final decision, the crowd of nobles supporting the candidates gathered at the County Hall: most of them listened to the noise from outside, through the open windows, and cheered their candidate from time to time in accordance with the signals of the courtiers standing in the window.

The noble crowd that entered the assembly hall engaged in a loud debate, which was accompanied by cheers and shouts led by the courtiers.

Act V of 1848 introduced the individual, single-round, plurality election system, in which Hungarian men who had reached the age of twenty and who met the financial threshold had the right to vote.

According to a 1925 law of the Horthy era, voting was secret, but mandatory, only in Budapest and in cities with legislative authority, for which everyone over the age of 24 and men who completed four years of schooling and women over 30 who completed six years of schooling were eligible.

Free elections were finally abolished by the 1949 law, which gave the right of nomination to the National Council of the People's Front and limited the possibility of voting to a single, fixed (closed) list.

The right to nominate came into the hands of the Patriotic People's Front in 1966, and the individual district system was also introduced at that time.

According to the law, in addition to the two official candidates of the Patriotic People's Front, the participants of the nomination meetings could also propose another person.

In the 1985 elections, as a result, 32 of the 74 so-called spontaneous candidates entered parliament, including the MSZMP member Zoltán Király, a television editor-reporter, who won a seat in one of Szeged's electoral districts ahead of Mihály Komócsin, the retired first secretary of the county party committee at the time.

In 1989, the opposition revived the legal institution of the recall of representatives; the deputies who resigned as a result of this were replaced by opposition candidates in the parliament of the late Kádár era: among others, Gábor Roszík (MDF) in Gödöllő, József Debreceni (MDF) in Kecskemét, Gáspár Miklós Tamás (SZDSZ) in Budapest.