Austrian party reverses result after spreadsheet hiccup
WeirdNews
Andreas Babler becomes the Social Democrats’ new leader
BERLIN (AP) — Austria’s main center-left opposition party on Monday reversed the result of its weekend leadership election, announcing that a computer error originally led to the wrong candidate being declared the winner.
Andreas Babler, the mayor of the town of Traiskirchen, outside Vienna, becomes the Social Democrats’ new leader as the party tries to turn around its fortunes ahead of a national election expected next year. At a party convention on Saturday, Hans Peter Doskozil — the governor of the southeastern Burgenland province and a figure better known to the public — had narrowly been declared the winner.
At a hastily called news conference on Monday, the head of the party’s electoral commission, Michaela Grubesa, announced that it was in fact Babler and not Doskozil who won, taking 317 votes to Doskozil’s 280, the Austria Press Agency reported.
Grubesa said that a recount had taken place on Monday because one vote was missing from the original total. In the process, party officials discovered that “the result was reversed” on Saturday due to an error that occurred when votes were put into a spreadsheet, she said.
