Due to a typo in Excel, Hans Peter Doskozil thought he had won for two days while Andreas Babler was elected
Due to a clerical voting error, the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ), the country’s largest opposition party, had a new leader for a few days who was not the one who actually won the party conference on Saturday 3 June. On this occasion, the victory was awarded to Hans Peter Doskozil, Governor of Burgenland, who had started giving some interviews as leader in Pectore over the weekend, expecting that he was already in the process of assembling his own team of collaborators. However, the SPÖ announced an error in the count on Monday and finally awarded the victory to Andreas Babler, mayor of a Lower Austrian city.
The head of the party’s election commission, Michaela Grubesa, said that at last Saturday’s meeting “due to a technical error” the votes were allotted incorrectly. According to the Austrian newspapers, the error occurred when transferring some votes to an Excel spreadsheet. In the hours following the announcement of the winner, doubts were raised as some observers disagreed with the commission’s official findings.
On Saturday 596 valid votes had been cast: 316 for Doskozil and 279 for Babler, but the total still amounted to 595. So at the weekend all the ballots had been recounted and finally the result was different from the previous one, and most importantly the opposite. Baler had received 317 votes, Doskozil had 280. Announcing the new results, Grubesa said there was no need to proceed with a new congress.
After the correct winner was announced, Doskozil stated that he accepts the new results and expects to work with Babler. And Babler said that the mistake was “painful” for everyone, but that you now have to think about the future of the SPÖ.
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