Steven N.
The fact that Sunday’s referendum was declared invalid does not appear to be newsworthy to certain news sources friendly to the government. In articles published in Origó or vg.hu, for example, it does not appear anywhere that the government-sponsored four-question referendum on “child protection” issues failed.
The National Election Office said that a valid referendum would have required valid responses from at least 4.1 million voters, but not one of the four questions reached this threshold. However, this is not mentioned in the articles on the referendum by these news sites.
Other media outlets pointd out that the referendum didn’t succeed, but chose to draw attention to the number of people that rejected questions like, “Do you support the promotion of gender reassignment treatments for minor children?”
Magyar Nemzet, for example, wrote that despite the national referendum being declared invalid, the overwhelming majority of people answered “no” to the questions. They therefore considered it successful, as “more than half of those who voted validly gave the same answer” to the questions drawn up by the government.
888.hu and PestiSrácok.hu also highlighted the high number of “no” votes for each questions, with 888‘s headine (pictured above) reading, “Overwhelming proportion of ‘no’ votes in the child protection referedum.”
The questions in the “child protection” referendum covered nearly nothing new in a legal sense, but were still useful for the government for political reasons, writes HVG.
[HVG]
