Five Hungarian polling and market research agencies said on Thursday that they supported the National Election Committee's (OVB) proposal to replace pre-election candidate petition slips with a down payment which is refunded if the party clears the 5 percent threshold for gaining seats in parliament.

In a report on the European parliamentary elections, OVB reiterated its 2006 proposal that slips should be replaced with the down payment to be deposited by candidates.

Agencies Median, Meltanyossag, Political Capital, Progressziv and Republikon argue that depositing the money would filter out unserious candidates, increase transparency, eliminate data protection concerns and reduce the number of abuses.

They added that the new method would in fact make it cheaper for parties to field candidates.

A number of abuses surfaced in the recent past such as party activists misleading voters by "collecting" slips for another political force, or taking over blank or partially filled slips from them to enter the name of a party or candidate other than the voters' choice.

The pollsters asked the parliamentary parties to disclose as soon as possible when and how they wish to eliminate the current petition slips, which, they said, would challenge the fairness of the general elections scheduled for the spring of 2010.