Hungary: a democracy, after all
When it comes to legitimacy, nothing beats paper ballots.
Today Hungary has a new prime minister, a new government. I wanted to post good news about the state of Hungarian democracy sooner, but chose to stay cautious, just in case some incident happened during the transition of power.
None did.
Paper ballots
In Hungary 94% of people vote on paper ballots: you have a polling station to show up at (only one), where you show a valid ID. The average polling station expects 600 voters. You get assigned automatically to the one closest to your permanent address. There is no registration, whatever that is for in other countries.
Then you get to draw two Xs on the local and party ballots in the booth (you can bring your own pen). Putting them in an envelope is optional.
Both the ruling and the opposition parties make sure to send delegates to oversee every single polling station. When the polls close, they count the results by hand, sign a report in agreement, and send the result to both their own parties and the National Election Office.
This way everyone can cross-check everyone else’s results.
It’s fast, it’s transparent and it scales infinitely well: it works in a country of 10 million just as well as a country of 100 million.
The only dodgy bits of our election system are the mail-in ballots, as they are elsewhere. Hard to have opposition oversight or anonymity or both. God forbid that these get to decide an election one day.
Emphasis for my American readers:
Requiring a valid ID is not voter suppression: the 2026 Hungarian election had a 79.6% turnout while the 2026 US presidential election only had 65.3%.
A more lax system would have the dubious promise of increasing turnout above 80%, in exchange for seriously eroding trust and legitimacy regarding the result.Both parties must be allowed to oversee the whole process: kind of a no-brainer, but I remember big cities in swing states in 2020 where the Republicans weren’t allowed near the ballots. Absurd, right? It erodes trust and legitimacy regarding the result.
Hand-counted paper ballots can be lightning fast: the results — as we’ll see — are pretty clear within hours. No need for electronic thingies, those just erode trust and legitimacy.
The optimal number of mail-in ballots is zero: this crap is way too shady.
I’m sure there’s a blockchain tech way to allow anonymous and legit voting remotely, but the average person wouldn’t be able to understand it (neither would I, and I’m an IT janitor by trade).
An election result depending on mail-in ballots would give a dangerously weak legitimacy to the winner.
On April 12th, we went, we voted, and the polls closed at 7 pm.
Big Dick Vik’s goodbye
At 9:28 pm, live on national TV, Viktor Orban admitted defeat, congratulating his opponent. Two and a half hours after the polls closed.
The dictator, the autocrat, the monocrat, who led four consecutive governments with a 2/3 majority in parliament, conceded without hesitation or doubt.
The whole announcement was over by 9:31 pm. Sixteen years of hegemony was over in 3 minutes.
Not a peep since regarding the result, as far as the big picture goes. A remarkably clean election, and a remarkably smooth transition of power not just by the standards of young, Eastern Bloc democracies, but by the standards of the West.
No blood on the streets during his 16-year reign, crowned by a bloodless finale.
Hungary, the target of vicious polemics for more than a decade — a hybrid regime or whatever the Swamp came up with to call us subhuman East Euro filth incapable of managing our own affairs — turns out to be an exemplary democracy after all.