Will the newly introduced option to vote by mail for Czechs living abroad result in two million new voters, who could significantly impact the results of future elections in the Czech Republic? No, that's not true: The measure would apply to only about 600,000 Czech citizens living abroad, according to the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs, contacted by Lead Stories.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) published on TikTok on July 27, 2024. A text overlay in Czech, translated into English by Lead Stories staff, read "postal voting continued" and "facts and figures." The audio in the video says in Czech, as translated by Lead Stories staff:
Let's delve again into a topic that could fundamentally change the political situation in the Czech Republic. Imagine more than 2 million Czechs living abroad, 1.5 million of them in the US alone, could vote directly from their homes. Less than 5.5 million of the 8.5 million voters voted in the last election, so this new wave could have a huge impact...
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Thu Aug 29 07:17:31 2024 UTC)
AI-detection tool True Media's analysis of the video (see the full report here) conducted by Lead Stories found "substantial evidence" that the audio in the TikTok video had been manipulated: In particular, the "Audio Authenticity Detector" and the "AI-generated Audio Detector" used in the True Media's analysis gave respectively a 99 percent and a 94 percent confidence that the audio was artificially generated (archived here).
On August 21, 2024, the Czech Senate approved postal voting for Czech citizens living abroad (archived here). The measure was part of the current Czech government coalition SPOLU platform, led by the Civic Democrats. The TikTok video was released about a month before the Senate approved the bill.
The statements in the above TikTok video confuse two groups of people: Czechs with Czech citizenship who live abroad and can now use postal, or absentee, voting instead of traveling to designated places to cast their votes for the elections. The other, much larger group is comprised of people of Czech origin or roots who are citizens of another country but not the Czech Republic and cannot vote in elections.
A spokesperson for the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs (archived here) stated in an e-mail to Lead Stories on August 29, 2024, that there are about 2.5 to 3 million compatriots, or people with Czech roots, registered abroad. Of these, an estimated 600,000 have Czech citizenship and are, therefore, potential voters.
According to the Czech Statistical Office, 13,184 valid votes were cast abroad (archived here) in the last parliamentary elections 2021. In the second round of the presidential election in 2023 (archived here), these were 22,932, according to the statistics office.
Apart from changing the law to allow postal voting for citizens living abroad, the Czech government also approved a proposal from lawmakers (archived here) in December 2023 that would allow descendants of emigrants from the former communist Czechoslovakia, who were illegally stripped of their citizenship by the regime, to become citizens of their ancestral country. The proposal streamlines the procedure for some descendants of former Czechoslovak citizens, even though they will still have to prove their link to their ancestors' citizenship if the Czech parliament approves the proposal.
Lead Stories has debunked a claim from the opposition and anti-migration politician Tomio Okamura, stating the government wants to give "foreigners Czech citizenship in exchange for their votes" here.
Lead Stories has already debunked claims about the introduction of postal voting in the Czech Republic here or here or here.
