Ahead of Germany’s upcoming general elections, officials warn against premature announcements of alleged poll results by Twitter subscribers.
Before the state media are allowed to broadcast exit polls, baseless postings regarding poll results could fuel ill-founded theorizations about the outcome of the event, German authorities said on Saturday.
“It would be a disaster if the survey results were released before voting stations close,” federal election commissioner Roderich Egeler was quoted by Zionist-run Der Spiegel magazine as saying.
Egeler and other German officials suggested that in the event of such an incident, many would feel free to contest the official results.
The worries have begun haunting electoral processes worldwide after the social networking website played host to an avalanche of unconfirmed projections of Iran’s June 12 presidential election and the ensuing unrest.
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As the voting was in process and based on their purported access to the exit polls, many Twitter users put up the alleged returns in percentage terms. As a result one of the candidates claimed victory about an hour after the votes closed.
Once the official result turned out to contradict the prediction the candidate and his supporters cried foul.
Twitter and Facebook also led other cyber hotspots in hosting video messages supposedly depicting the post-election events in the Islamic Republic. source
