Home > 2.3 Observation > HUNGARY - Joint Opinion on the 2020 Amendments to the Electoral Legislation
 
 
 
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Paragraph 64
 

Section 7 of the Act introduces a new Section 13/C in the Act on Electoral Procedure which mandates the destruction of sensitive election materials on the ninetieth working day after the voting. It provides a list of documents to destroy including, among others, all voter registers and related requests and decisions, registered personal details of observers, lists of voters supporting candidate nominations, and ballot papers. This provision consolidates several other repealed provisions that appeared throughout the act on the destruction of specific types of election materials and aims to comprehensively cover destruction of all sensitive materials. The new provision refers to destruction on the ninetieth day after the voting (as did the repealed provisions). However, the Venice Commission and ODIHR recommend that the timing for destruction be explicitly tied to the finalisation of any legal disputes, to ensure that relevant evidence in ongoing disputes is not destroyed. They also recommend that, as a matter of security, the law specify how the materials are to be destroyed.