The Czech Supreme Administrative Court upheld the results of the country’s European elections, rejecting a complaint by outgoing MEP Michaela Šojdrová.
On 22 June, Šojdrová filed a complaint about inaccuracies in the counting of preferential votes, although it found errors in the protocols of some election commissions and suggested changes.
The Czech Republic uses preferential voting, which allows voters to favour the party of their choice on a list of parties. Candidates who receive a majority of preferences have a better chance of being elected as they skip candidates higher on the list.
“Immediately after the elections, I started to receive feedback from my voters that even though they had circled me, I had no preferential votes in their region.”
According to the published results, Šojdrová received 32,447 preferential votes. This is more than Ondřej Kolář, who had 31,623 preferential votes and was on the same electoral list as the SPOLU coalition (ECR, EPP).
However, Šojdrová was one place below him and lacked only 616 preferential votes to defend her seat in the European Parliament for the second time. Following her complaint, the Supreme Administrative Court ordered a verification of the votes.
The results indeed showed that almost a hundred votes for Šojdrová had been incorrectly counted for other candidates.
This was not enough to secure a seat, and the court therefore approved Kolář as a newly elected MEP.
The Supreme Administrative Court, therefore, found certain irregularities. However, we have concluded that the hypotheses put forward by the appellant have not been confirmed.
The court itself recommended changing the forms used by election commissions to prevent the recurrence of such violations. Kolář stated:
“Whether we really have such a great election (system) as we keep telling ourselves is a matter for another debate. As long as the election commissions count the votes like bartenders in a pub, we have a problem.”
