Municipal council and mayor elections in Vorarlberg 2020

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As part of the municipal council and mayoral elections in Vorarlberg 2020 , the municipal representative bodies of all 96 municipalities in the Austrian state of Vorarlberg were newly elected. In 65 of the 96 municipalities, the office of mayor was also available for direct election in addition to the municipal council.

The main election date for the municipal council elections and the direct mayor elections was originally scheduled for March 15, 2020. This election date was canceled by the Vorarlberg state government in view of the COVID-19 pandemic on March 12, 2020 and the elections were postponed indefinitely. Governor Markus Wallnerannounced on April 15 that the elections would still be held in 2020, although a postponement to spring 2021 (up to nine months after the end of the crisis situation) would also be possible by law. On May 19, it was initially announced that the elections would be held on September 6, and the necessary legislative changes, for example in order to be able to retain lists that had already been introduced, should be decided by the Vorarlberg state parliament in June. On June 8, however, it was announced that the election would be postponed to September 13, 2020 at the request of several municipalities.

Suffrage

Right to vote

For the election of the municipal council and the mayor in 2020, who was actively eligible to vote

  • be at least 16 years of age on election day, September 13, 2020,
  • his main residence at the reference date, June 29, 2020 had in Vorarlberg and the Austrian citizenship or the citizenship of a Member State of the European Union had
  • and has not been excluded from the right to vote (is explicitly pronounced by the court in the case of certain criminal convictions in individual cases or in the case of a stay of less than one year, if it is obvious that this is only temporary).
Passive suffrage

Every Vorarlberg or Union citizen who met the requirements of the right to vote and who was at least 18 years of age on election day could be elected to the municipal council. However, only a citizen of the municipality, i.e. an Austrian citizen with main residence in the respective municipality, could be elected mayor of a municipality .

Electoral systems

In most of the municipalities in the country, the municipal council was elected by list and the mayor was elected directly. In addition, as Vorarlberger Unikum, there were two other electoral procedures that are used in special cases.

List election with mayor direct election

In the list election with direct mayor election, parties or free lists submit nominations for the municipal council and for the office of mayor. The voters can then cast one vote for a list or party at the municipal council and one vote for the election of the mayor. In addition, five preferential votes can be given to the chosen list of the municipal council. In the mayoral election, the voters do not have to forcibly give their vote to the candidate from the list or party elected by the municipal council ( vote splitting ).

The possibility of direct election of the mayor has only existed in Vorarlberg since the amendment to the electoral law of 1999. The direct election procedure was first used in the municipal council and mayor elections in 2000.

List selection (with area code)

When voting on lists, voters choose the new municipal council from pre-prepared lists (often referred to as "unit" or "community lists"). This voting system is often used in conjunction with an area code. Either an empty ballot is sent to all eligible voters in the municipality, on which they can enter those people who they think should appear on the list, or the parties send their lists to the citizens, who then rank them in advance of the election can make within this. In the subsequent election, those entitled to vote will again have the opportunity to change their ranking on the lists with preferential votes. In the case of pure list voting, the members of the newly elected municipal council then determine the mayor of the municipality from among their number.

Majority vote

In principle, the municipal council in Vorarlberg is to be carried out according to proportional representation. If, however, no party in a municipality stands for election at least six weeks before the election day, the election will be carried out according to majority voting . Each person entitled to vote can enter a maximum of twice as many names (of those who are passively eligible to vote in this municipality ) as there are places in the municipal council on the ballot paper. Those with the highest number of votes are then considered elected. The newly elected community representatives then elect the new mayor from among their number in their first meeting. This procedure, which is used in Vorarlberg as the only Austrian federal state, is laid down in the 9th section of the Vorarlberg Municipal Election Act under the name “Elections to the municipal council in the absence of nominations”. The majority vote was overturned as unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court in 1984 , but reintroduced in 2000 after an amendment to the Federal Constitutional Act.

In the election in September 2020, this majority voting system was used in 13 municipalities in the country. At the original election date in March, a majority vote was planned in 14 municipalities, but in the meantime there were two lists for election in Lorüns , with which a normal list election was carried out there.

Innovations in the right to vote

Due to the postponement of the election date as a result of the corona pandemic in Austria and the previous exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union , all British citizens residing in Vorarlberg who were still (active and passive) at the original election date in March due to the deadline of December 30th lost ) would have been eligible to vote as former EU citizens, their right to vote.

An innovation in the 2020 ballots, which the opposition parties in the Vorarlberg state parliament had long called for, concerned the separation of municipal council and mayoral elections: For the first time, two separate ballots were used in these ballots , which were put together in an envelope and counted separately. Voting splitting , i.e. the election of one party in the municipal council election and the mayoral candidate of another party, had already been permitted, but now the two ballots have also been more clearly separated from each other on the ballot papers.

Results

Municipal council elections 2020
 %
50
40
30th
20th
10
0
42.4%
(+5.0  % p )
12.5%
(-1.6  % p )
14.5%
(+ 3.2  % p )
9.7%
(-0.1  % p )
3.0%
(+1.7  % p )
17.9%
(-8.2  % p )
Otherwise.
2015

2020


The Vorarlberg state electoral authority does not publish any state-wide results for municipal council elections, as these are sometimes difficult to employ due to the lack of fixed assignments to the parties represented in the state parliament. There are, however, unofficial calculations that are based on the allocation of lists from the municipalities to parties in the state parliament (where this allocation is not already clear from the list names) and at least allow a rough overview of the distribution of votes in the municipal council elections nationwide (see diagram).

While in most of the Vorarlberg municipalities the incumbents were confirmed as mayors and the composition of the municipal councils did not change significantly, there were clear shifts in some municipalities: The Vorarlberg People's Party was able to act as a determining force in the municipal councils throughout the entire country maintain and also provide the vast majority of mayors, but lost the absolute majority in the municipal council in Lustenau and lost massive votes in Hohenems and Hard . The Vorarlberg Freedom Party had to come to terms with the loss of the mayor's office in Fußach , which means that only three FPÖ mayors rule in Vorarlberg municipalities (in Hohenems, Nenzing and Vandans ). The SPÖ Vorarlberg was able to win two mayor's offices in the first ballot (in Bürs and St. Gallenkirch ) and also move into the mayor's runoff election in Bregenz , Bludenz and Hard. The Greens gained massive votes in the larger communities and also reached the runoff election in Lochau with their mayoral candidate. NEOS made it into the municipal council in ten of the eleven municipalities in which the party was a candidate and even became the second largest parliamentary group in Mäder .

Among other things, the municipality of Lech (Vorarlberg) caused surprises , where long-term mayor Ludwig Muxel ("Lech List") was only second in the direct mayor election behind the previous registrar Stefan Jochum ("Our village") and therefore had to go to a runoff . In the municipality of Zwischenwasser , there was a surprising change at the top of the municipality when the previous municipal secretary Jürgen Bachmann was able to clearly prevail against the previous mayor Kilian Tschabrun in the direct mayor election and was elected as the new mayor in the first ballot. There was also an unexpected change of mayor in the community of Schwarzenberg in the Bregenz Forest , where Josef Anton Schmid from the Schwarzenberg citizens' list won against the previous mayor, Markus Flatz ("Future Schwarzenberg"). Finally, the previous incumbent, Mayor Karl Hehle (ÖVP), was not re-elected in Hörbranz , and instead his challenger Andreas Kresser (“TOP list”) was elected the new mayor in the first ballot.

A mayor run-off election was necessary in a total of six Vorarlberg municipalities: In the cities of Bregenz , Bludenz and Feldkirch , the ÖVP candidates compete against SPÖ candidates (in Bregenz and Bludenz) or against an FPÖ candidate (Feldkirch). In the market town of Hard , ÖVP mayor Eva-Maria Mair will run against the state chairman of the SPÖ Martin Staudinger in the runoff election, in Lochau ÖVP mayor Michael Simma against the challenger of the Greens, Frank Matt. In addition, there is the runoff election already described in the municipality of Lech (Vorarlberg) . All runoff elections take place exactly two weeks after the first election date, i.e. on Sunday, September 27, 2020.

voter turnout

The turnout in the municipal elections held throughout Vorarlberg also fell from a low level in the 2020 election: in the whole of the state, just over 53 percent of those eligible to vote cast their votes. The 15 largest municipalities in the country recorded particularly low voter turnouts. In six of these, fewer than half of the eligible voters took part in the elections. Turnout was particularly low in Kennelbach , where only 43.88% of eligible voters cast their votes. The second lowest voter turnout in the country was recorded in the country's second largest city, Feldkirch , with only 43.93% valid votes. The highest voter turnout, however, reached the Bregenzerwald small community of Damüls , where 85.43% of those eligible to vote cast their votes. The municipality of Lech (Vorarlberg) , where for the first time there were several lists to choose from, also recorded a comparatively high turnout of 81.09%.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Vorarlberg elections: Exciting ballots, especially in the cities. In: Vorarlberg Online (VOL.at). September 12, 2020, accessed September 20, 2020 .
  2. ^ Vorarlberg municipal elections on March 15th. In: Vorarlberg Online (VOL.at). November 5, 2019, accessed December 13, 2019 .
  3. ^ Municipal elections on Sunday canceled. In: vorarlberg.ORF.at . March 12, 2020, accessed March 12, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Wallner wants elections this year. In: vorarlberg.ORF.at . April 15, 2020, accessed April 16, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Elections will take place in Vorarlberg on September 6th. Vorarlberg Online, May 19, 2020, accessed on May 19, 2020 .
  6. ^ Vorarlberg municipal council elections postponed to September 13th. In: derStandard.at . June 8, 2020, accessed June 8, 2020 .
  7. ↑ During the Vorarlberg elections there will be blank ballot papers in 13 municipalities. In: derStandard.at . September 1, 2020, accessed September 1, 2020 .
  8. ↑ Empty ballot papers in 13 municipalities. In: vorarlberg.ORF.at . September 2, 2020, accessed September 2, 2020 .
  9. ^ Despite leaving the EU: Britons are eligible to vote. In: vorarlberg.ORF.at . February 7, 2020, accessed September 1, 2020 .
  10. ↑ For the first time own ballot for mayoral election. In: vorarlberg.ORF.at . September 1, 2020, accessed September 1, 2020 .
  11. ↑ a b Maximilian Werner: Vorarlberg municipal elections 2020: overall result. In: Maximilian Werner's weblog. September 18, 2020, accessed September 19, 2020 .
  12. ↑ Election: All state parties see positive things. In: vorarlberg.ORF.at . September 14, 2020, accessed September 18, 2020 .
  13. ↑ runoff in the prestigious ski resort of Lech. In: vorarlberg.ORF.at . September 13, 2020, accessed September 18, 2020 .
  14. ↑ a b c Surprises and pictures of election day. In: vorarlberg.ORF.at . September 14, 2020, accessed September 18, 2020 .
  15. ↑ Preparations for the runoff election are in full swing. In: ORF Vorarlberg . September 17, 2019, accessed September 18, 2019 .
  16. ↑ Interest in local politics continues to decline. In: vorarlberg.ORF.at . September 14, 2020, accessed September 18, 2020 .