The Price of a Vote in Orbán’s Hungary

Weeks before Hungary’s potentially historic election, a new investigative documentary exposes the systematic use of vote-buying and voter intimidation by Fidesz in the country’s poorest regions.

With less than two weeks until Hungary’s most consequential election in over a decade, which could unseat Viktor Orbán after 16 years in power and a total of five terms in office, the political climate in Hungary is growing increasingly tense.

Over the last week alone, the Orbán government announced espionage charges against Szabolcs Panyi, a prominent Hungarian investigative journalist who covers Fidesz connections to Russia and Russian influence operations in Hungary, while the Washington Post reported that Hungary received advice from the Russian intelligence service on how to influence the election, including by staging a fake assassination attempt on Orbán. All the while, the Orbán government warns about “systematic foreign interference” on social media, alleging that foreign actors and domestic allies seek to influence its politics and elections.

Against this backdrop, a new investigative documentary by “De! Action Group” (DE! Akcióközösség) titled “The Price of a Vote” (A Szavazat Ára) reveals the systematic election fraud organised by Fidesz in Hungary’s poorest regions. With more than 1.3 million views within a few days, the film documents how the Orbán regime has perfected a system that includes vote-buying, blackmail, and voter intimidation to ensure that people turn out to vote and Fidesz wins these districts.

A system of carrots and sticks

Visiting 14 of Hungary’s 19 counties and driving over 10,000 kilometres in total across Hungary, the filmmakers spoke with dozens of people to expose a sophisticated network established in 53 of 106 constituencies, each of which elects one MP by simple majority, in which Fidesz systematically employs intimidation and vote-buying to secure votes. The said network comprises a leader, a deputy, and several data collectors tasked with gathering relevant information about the electorate to facilitate voter mobilisation and intimidation in the months leading up to the election.

The rural settlements featured are considered Fidesz strongholds, not for ideological reasons, but because these areas are characterised by high poverty, thus making them particularly vulnerable to the vote-buying tactics the documentary reveals.

The documentary opens with an anonymous interviewee describing how a group of people distributes food supplies, such as chickens and potatoes, the night before the elections to ensure people turn out to vote for Fidesz. They acknowledge that this system is still in place and running. However, instead of distributing food, they now even provide drugs to drug addicts to get them to vote for Fidesz (despite the tough drug criminalisation laws), and direct monetary incentives giving people 10,000 Forint (around 25 Euros) per Fidesz vote.

While this may not sound like much, for the people in these settlements who are barely making it by, it makes the difference between whether you can feed your children for a day or not.

However, as the documentary also shows, the issue goes deeper than vote-buying. Throughout the film, various sources elaborate on common voter intimidation and blackmail tactics used. As Péter Juhász, a political commentator and former president of the Together party (Együtt), summarises the documentary: This is not an issue about Roma, who predominantly live in these very poor settlements, and are core targets of these tactics. Rather, the government tricks, blackmails, and threatens anyone, or simply “buys them”, to ensure that they vote for Fidesz. Some of the interviewees later even withdrew their statements because they were threatened and feared for their lives.

“It has to be handled so that fear is present in their everyday lives”

Fidesz mayors in these rural areas play a central role in this system, controlling the daily lives of these Hungarians by providing work and other resources in exchange for their voting “correctly” on election day. Here, Hungary’s public works programme comes into play, a workfare programme that aims to employ long-term unemployed and low-skilled individuals. Mayors are largely responsible for the implementation of these programmes in their constituencies and are in close contact with those employed in the public work programmes, threatening them with depriving them of public work (közmunka) and thereby their daily income if they did not vote for Fidesz.

But the threats go further. One person involved in these actions says that if these intimidation tactics did not work, they would “not give things” or even “take things away,” such as electricity or firewood subsidies. Some village residents are afraid that Fidesz-aligned doctors would not prescribe them medicine.

These networks even instrumentalise child protection services against voters, threatening them with taking away their children. As one person recounted, their newborn was taken away from them after the hospital was notified by child protective services that the child could not stay with the family (they were later reunited).

These intimidation strategies are also used against their own mayors: if they do not perform adequately as the Fidesz government expects or fail to secure enough votes in the election, they will no longer receive any grants, thus incentivising them to conform and play the system.

“You have no idea what they’re capable of”

Yet, the pressure extends even to those working in these networks who are responsible for getting people to vote for Fidesz, as they may become targets of intimidation and threats. One source from inside the network explains how they received money and other resources to give to voters and mobilise them, and that they were afraid of retaliation if they did not ensure that the people who received these incentives actually voted. As a result, they do everything to ensure people go and vote for Fidesz, even instructing voters not to go on their own, and that they will be taken to the polling stations to make sure they do vote.

A witness and resident of Nyírbogát, a small town in northeastern Hungary, corroborates such accounts, explaining how numerous cars are lined up during election day, bringing and taking people to and from the polling station, thus highlighting the organised manner of these operations.

But the vote-buying and influence operations do not end outside the polling stations. Another informant describes how voter manipulation and vote buying continue inside the polling station, as those “monitoring” the election can already see how people have voted. Almost all voters “ask for help” when voting, and those who do receive money immediately after leaving the polling station. Those who do not ask for help (and thus vote “anonymously” and likely for someone other than Fidesz) receive nothing (and might even lose their jobs, the informant adds).

Similarly, some voters are told they will only receive money if they vote “openly”, meaning they do not go into the voting booth but instead vote at the table out in the open, where someone can watch them make their vote, or they have to show it to someone.

A system built to last

The instances recounted in the documentary are not isolated cases but part of a broader system that Fidesz has perfected over the years. Moreover, these tactics exist on top of an electoral system heavily tilted in Fidesz’s favour, with districts gerrymandered to benefit the party. More broadly, the existence of these networks raises the question of what will happen should Fidesz be ousted from power and whether these networks will persist and simply be taken over by another party to continue their “work”. After all, vote-buying is not unique to Fidesz, as other parties have pursued similar tactics in these areas. However, Fidesz has added a mafia-like infrastructure of intimidation that reaches into people’s homes, workplaces, and family lives. It remains to be seen what will happen to these networks should Fidesz be ousted on April 12.

For now, Fidesz continues to exploit this system and will reportedly even scale its operations: as the government has become increasingly unpopular and faces a serious challenger in Péter Magyar, it will need to manipulate the 2026 election on an even bigger scale than before. According to information received by the documentary’s makers, Fidesz “only” bought between 200,000 and 300,000 votes through this system during the 2022 election. For the 2026 elections, one source within the network claimed the operation would be twice as large, as they are now preparing to secure between 500,000 to 600,000 votes in this way.

Overall, the documentary’s revelations raise additional concerns about election integrity in Hungary. Although polls show Péter Magyar ahead of Orbán and a potential Tisza victory, they do not account for the extent of the biased electoral system, voter manipulation, intimidation, and outright electoral fraud as shown in the documentary. It thus remains to be seen to what extent the tactics recounted in the documentary will shift the electoral outcome on election day.

The BBC reached out to several Hungarian ministries for comments regarding the allegations in the film. However, they only received one response from Tibor Navracsics, Minister for Public Administration and Regional Development, who stated that “If there is any wrongdoing, just let the ministry of interior do its job”. But would you trust an Interior Ministry controlled by Fidesz, the very party that expanded this sophisticated system of voter fraud?

You can watch “The Price of a Vote” with English subtitles here.

Gabriela Greilinger