Can unused ballots discarded at polling places be used to tamper with election results? No, that's not true: Voters can discard unused ballots in bins after casting their vote, but there is a safe system in place and several measures to prevent discarded ballots from being used in any illegal way, a spokesperson for the Czech Interior Affairs Ministry explained to Lead Stories by email.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) published on TikTok on June 8, 2024. The person in the video says in Czech, translated by Lead Stories staff into English:
The rest of the ballots are here in the bag, and I'm going to throw them in the nearest trash can, because God knows what they do with them.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Mon Jun 10 06:51:08 2024 UTC)
The post above is about the European Parliament elections that took place in the Czech Republic on June 7-8, 2024. These elections are regulated by national bills and EU treaties and laws, such as the EU directive stating how EU citizens can vote in member states, and other EU treaties (archived here). The Czech Republic adopted the Act on Elections to the European Parliament and on the Amendment to Certain Laws in 2003, joining the EU in 2004 (archived here).
In the Czech Republic, there are trash bins in several polling stations, where voters can discard unused ballots after they cast their vote according to the regular procedure, by securing it into a ballot box, in an envelope they received from the voting commission of the polling station.
Lead Stories contacted the Czech Interior Affairs Ministry regarding the claim in the TikTok video, and on June 10, 2024, received an email response from spokesman Ondrek Kratoska, explaining that, as translated by Lead Stories staff:
Several safety measures are adopted to prevent using discarded ballots to tamper with the election results: The composition of the precinct election commission, secure official envelopes, and the system of recording the distribution of official envelopes in the electoral registers do not allow the misuse of ballots in the way you suggest.
For a vote to be counted in the election, it must be placed in the ballot box in an official envelope, issued to the voter only by the relevant precinct election commission upon proof of the voter's identity. The fact that the official envelope has been issued to the voter is recorded in the electoral register, which prevents the voter from voting more than once. The voter has to put only one ballot in the official envelope, and if more than one ballot is in the official envelope, the vote is considered invalid. At the same time, a ballot placed in the ballot box outside the official envelope is also invalid, Kratoska added in the email.
The composition of the precinct electoral commission itself, Kratoska further explained in the email, is meant to implicitly ensure mutual control on the members of the precinct electoral commissions, which must have at least four members - even in small precincts - who are primarily delegated (archived here) by the parties, movements, or coalitions that run in the elections.
Lead Stories has already fact-checked a similar claim questioning the legitimacy of the election process in the Czech Republic here.
