General information legal background and funding - National Election Office
- When will be the parliamentary elections held?
The President of the Republic has set the date of the 2018 election of the members of parliament to the 8th of April 2018.
- Did the rules change or do the same rules apply as in 2014?
- The legal frame of the election changed little over the past years, therefore basically the same rules apply as back in 2014.
- One of the changes is that after the amendment of the Act on Electoral Procedure in June 2014 the voters may request information whether their data is contained among the verified supporting signatures which are needed to put forward candidates. This can be requested by any voter who turns to the single member constituency election office (town clerk) in charge. Please take notice, that supporting signatures are only checked until the required 500 valid ones are determined. Anything above, even it amounts to several thousand, are not checked.
- Who has the right to vote?
- According to the Fundamental Law (Constitution) of Hungary all Hungarian citizens of legal age (meaning 18 years and older or those who got married before) has the right to vote and to stand as candidate during the election of the members of parliament.
- Those shall not vote or stand as candidate, who have been disenfranchised by a court due to a committed crime or limited mental capacity.
- Who are the international observers?
- Observers delegated by another country or by an international organization that have been registered as such by the National Election Office on the occasion of the given election.
- Observers may observe the entire election procedure and be present while the election bodies, may view the documents of the election commissions, may put questions to members of election bodies and call their attention to the detected irregularities.
- How much does organizing the election cost?
- The planned total cost of the 2018 election amounts to 8.1 billion HUF, 7 billion HUF of which are secured from the central budget, another 1.1 billion HUF from funding spared by the National Election Office from previous elections.
- 3.4 billion HUF expenditure is allocated for local and regional bodies and 4.7 billion HUF is planned by the National Election Office for central expenses. Local and regional expenditure is based on personnel and material costs while central expenditure consists of spending related to printing, postage, IT and security.
- The National Election Office has planned 2.8 billion HUF for personnel costs, 3.5 billion HUF for material costs and 1.8 billion HUF for IT costs.