Now the Federal Returning Officer has commented on the controversial Twitter post by Free Voters boss Hubert Aiwanger in the afternoon of the federal election. The investigations had shown that the tweet was a compilation of various data that were publicly available on election day, for example from previous forecasts, as well as invented figures, a spokeswoman said at the request of the SZ. An administrative offense could therefore not be proven. Therefore, the Federal Returning Officer does not initiate any administrative offense proceedings against Aiwanger.
Aiwanger had posted on election Sunday two hours before the closing of the polling stations, citing alleged figures from the election research group on Twitter that his Free Voters were four percent, and combined this with the call to cast all of his party’s votes from now on. The entry was deleted after a few minutes. But the indignation over Aiwanger was immense – among the free voters as well as among the other parties. The party leader was accused of breaking the taboo with the tweet that politicians should refrain from calling for elections and making other political statements on election day. The opposition called for Aiwanger to be recalled as Vice-Prime Minister and Minister of Economics. The Wahlen research group vehemently denied that the numbers came from her.
As soon as the tweet became known, the Federal Returning Officer checked an administrative offense against Aiwanger. The federal electoral law prohibits the publication of data from the polling of voters after voting on election day before the polling stations close. The ban is intended to prevent the electoral influence of voters who are still going to vote. Aiwanger himself quickly asserted that he had used numbers for the tweet that he had received from a third party, and under no circumstances any data from a by-election survey. He also named this person to the Federal Returning Officer. He denied the suspicion that he invented the numbers. The indignation about the FW boss lasted until the end.