520 Steyr residents affected

Next polling card mishap: error during mail dispatch

Voting cards can be used to exercise the right to vote by post.

(Bild: PID/Markus Wache)

Due to a technical error, 520 voters in Steyr were sent the wrong email with an incorrect sending number for the polling card they had applied for. It is the next mishap in Upper Austria after personalized ballot papers were previously put into the wrong envelopes in Frankenmarkt.

520 Steyr residents were sent an automated email after applying for a polling card for the national elections. The problem with this was that it was incorrect and contained an incorrect postcode, which in the worst case could have meant that the ballot papers could not have been collected from the post office. The city then sent the correct data in a second email.

Error has been corrected
The city has now informed us of this. The error was caused by the software, not by the city itself. And it should be fixed: "There is no 1000 percent certainty, but we assume that the applications will be processed correctly from now on," the town hall told the "Krone".

And the 520 citizens who were initially affected by the incorrect emails should also receive their polling cards soon. They were sent by post on Monday evening.

Glitch in Frankenmarkt too
This was preceded by night shifts by municipal employees at the weekend. "Our colleagues checked the numbers on the polling cards and in the emails," said the town.

This is already the second mishap in Upper Austria. In Frankenmarkt, as reported, some ballot papers were sorted into the wrong envelopes. The error was noticed because a couple reported it: We have the correct envelopes, but we received the polling cards from someone else.