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The Higher Court of Thurgau found the former town clerk of Frauenfeld guilty of qualified election fraud.
The affair surrounding the election fraud in the canton of Thurgau is entering the second round. The Thurgau High Court also convicted the former Frauenfeld town clerk of qualified election fraud.
12 months conditional and legal costs
The higher court largely confirmed the judgment of the district court: 12 months conditional imprisonment and bearing of the procedural costs of 14,500 francs. The district court had sentenced the former town clerk to a fine of CHF 3,000 in the first instance a year ago.
The judges found it proven that the former city clerk was guilty of election fraud, even in the absence of clear evidence.
SVP received too many seats
The election fraud occurred in the general elections in March 2020. In the Frauenfeld election office, ballot papers from the Green Liberals were wrongly assigned to the SVP. The GLP lost one seat, the SVP received one too many. The GLP became suspicious and intervened, there was a criminal complaint and the Thurgau public prosecutor’s office opened proceedings.
Legend:
The former town clerk of Frauenfeld has been convicted of qualified election fraud.
key stone
In the course of the investigations, the former town clerk of Frauenfeld came into focus. The prosecution accused him of having manipulated the results of the general elections. Specifically, after checking the votes, he is said to have realized that an error had occurred when counting. Two stacks of election lists from the Green Liberals ended up in the SVP by mistake.
Hot off the press election lists without a fold
In order to cover up the mistake and prevent the seat from being moved, the former city clerk only reported one of the stacks found. He destroyed the remaining 100 or so GLP votes and replaced them with hot off the press election lists from the SVP.
The Attorney General based his description of the course of the crime on traces on the ballot papers of the SVP. Some of these ballot papers were hardly folded and had “relatively few” fingerprints. This indicates that ballot papers were only added later. On the other hand, the fingerprints of the former town clerk were found on two of the added SVP lists.
“No Reasonable Doubts”
The judges of the first and now also the second instance consider the “fold theory” to be plausible – and made their judgments based on this chain of evidence. The results of the criminal investigation and the surveys would leave “no reasonable doubt” that it had happened differently.
According to the indictment, the motive for the crime was the accused’s intention “to save face, not to damage the image of the city of Frauenfeld and to use the opportunity to settle an old score with the GLP”. In the Frauenfeld city parliament, the GLP had critically questioned his commitment as a CVP councillor.