Following the reforms of the respective laws on municipal and parliamentary elections, Fidesz has finally introduced the last piece of the electoral rules puzzle, the new bill on electoral procedure. As has been anticipated for a while now, this law will bring Hungary a voluntary voter registration scheme to replace the system of automatic registration in place until now. Apart from Fidesz’ hopes that registration will keep anti-government late deciders at home, the measure has not much to recommend itself. Fidesz has deftly added a few other changes to the bill, which managed to steer quite a bit of the reporting on the bill away from the most controversial measures. Not for the first time, a legal act in Hungary would compel every municipality to have at least some fully accessible facilities for people with limited mobility. Also on the plus side, at least in the context of parliamentary elections the proposed bill would make i t significantly easier to become a candidate.
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Policy Solutions is a progressive political research institute based in Budapest. It was founded in 2008 and it is committed to the values of liberal democracy, solidarity, equal opportunity, sustainability and European integration. The focus of Policy Solutions’ work is on understanding political processes in Hungary and the European Union. Among the pre-eminent areas of our research are the investigation of how the quality of democracy evolves, the analysis of factors driving euroscepticism, populism and the far-right, and election research.
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