German Elections: Safe, Secure And Quick
By Harry Minium
BERLIN, Germany – The polls opened at 8 a.m. on Sunday a week ago, and when they closed at 6, nearly 1.9 million Berliners had voted.
By 9 p.m., initial results were complete enough that we knew who had won and lost. By 1:30 Monday morning, provisional results had been announced.
Germans are known for their discipline and hard work. But even so, counting nearly two million paper ballots so quickly by hand? That is stunningly remarkable.
After moving to Berlin three months ago, I’m convinced there is much we could learn from our German friends, and that includes holding elections. Few states in America, outside of Florida, come close to Germany when it comes to holding fast, efficient and transparent elections.
Our problems didn’t begin in 2020 but that’s when election integrity became a controversial subject.
Because mail-in ballots were still arriving days after the 2020 election, and because rules in some states prohibit counting mail-in ballots before election day, it took four long, painful days before Joe Biden was pronounced our next president.
Millions went to bed on election night thinking Donald Trump had won because he led in several key midwestern states. By the next morning, he trailed Biden significantly.
In all, it took 16 days for votes to be finalized in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Donald Trump bitterly complained, of course, that the election was stolen.
In California’s June primaries, it was a week before winners were declared in the gubernatorial and Los Angeles mayoral contests.
A week to count election results is an absurdly long time, and there is some fraud in every election. But do you really believe the election was stolen from Donald Trump?
I hope and believe that is not the case.
Even so, a recent Quinnipiac poll found that 51 percent of Americans are concerned about potential fraud in the upcoming mid-term elections. In other words, they don’t completely trust our election system.
These fears have largely been stoked by Trump, of course, but several studies have indicated that delayed election results have helped heighten fears of election fraud.
The longer it takes to announce the results, the more people suspect skullduggery.
And it’s not just Republicans who don’t trust votes are being fairly counted.
An Associated Press poll recently found that just 34 percent of Americans trust government certifications of election results “quite a bit.”
That’s just one in three, and that’s down from 40 percent two years ago.
More than 50 percent of Americans are concerned that large numbers of illegal aliens are voting. I also doubt that’s true, but the recent revelation that more than 6,600 illegals were registered to vote in New Jersey was disturbing.
Trust in the German election system here, meanwhile, is nearly uniform. And in a country once run by Adolf Hitler, and in which East Germany was a Communist nation for decades, a rigorous system of checks and balances is absolutely necessary.
The Germans, with America’s help, designed an election system in the 1950s that has evolved into one that is remarkably free of fraud and hugely efficient.
I went to the polls Sunday with my wife, Kerstin, in our East Berlin neighborhood and was allowed inside the school that served as a polling place. It was a five-minute walk from our flat.
The voting process began a month ago when she received a notice that the election would be held Sept. 20.
When you move in Germany, you must report your address to the German government within two weeks, and when you do so, you are automatically registered as a voter where you live.
That’s a key difference here between the USA and Germany. In Deutschland, you’re automatically registered to vote when you are a German citizen. And you automatically receive a government ID.
As an American expat, I also had to report my address and eventually received a residence permit. But I am not allowed to vote.
Every German who votes must show a government ID at the polling place, and yes, requiring IDs to vote in American elections would do much to overcome distrust of our election system.
In the USA, you need an ID to buy beer, check into a hotel, cash a check or board an airline flight. It’s not too much to ask you to show an ID to vote. More than 80 percent of Americans, including large majorities of African Americans, agree.
We showed up at the school around 11 a.m. and unlike my voting precinct in Virginia Beach, there were no politicians or campaign volunteers handing out guide ballots, bottles of water or bumper stickers. They aren’t allowed and that was refreshing.
Campaigning was robust prior to the election – the Green Party often handed out Brötchen, along with campaign pamphlets, at a nearby S-Bahn station during my morning commute to German language class.
Campaign signs were hung on telephone and electric poles all over the city. There were campaign rallies in every district and numerous debates on TV.
But there is no campaigning on election day.
Kerstin had her ID checked at the front desk, stepped behind a curtain to fill out her ballot, and had her ID checked once again at another desk. She then deposited her ballot into an old-fashioned ballot box, the kind you see on grainy movies from long ago.
I sat slack-jawed when I realized there wasn’t a voting machine in sight.
Do you, like me, worry about whether your vote is really counted when you stick your ballot into a scanner? No such worries in Berlin.
From Milwaukee to Atlanta, there have been substantive questions about the how electronic voting records have been mishandled.
Call me old fashioned, but I don’t fully trust voting machines.
Few polling outlets in Berlin reported long lines of voters, either. That’s because Germany spends a ton of money to make it convenient to vote.
In Berlin, a city of four million souls, more than 2,500 polling stations were open. They were manned by 40,000 election workers, all of whom were volunteers.
In Germany, precincts are designed to serve no more than 2,500 voters. In Berlin, an average of 800 people voted per precinct. Meanwhile, Virginia Beach, a city of nearly 460,000 people, has just 108 precincts.
I often faced long lines when I voted in Hampton Roads, and often had to race to my precinct from work. That’s because our elections are held on Tuesdays, a regular work day.
But in Germany, elections are held on Sunday because it is an official day off. Office buildings, factories, grocery stores, government facilities and shopping malls are shut for the day by law.
There is no early voting here, like there is an America, and yet voter participation is much higher. Nearly 86 percent of eligible voters participated in the 2025 national elections and 74 percent of eligible Berliners voted on Sunday.
In 2024, in spite of weeks of early voting, just 64 percent of Americans voted in the Presidential election.
In recent years, voting by mail in the USA has increased markedly. The same is true in Germany. More than a third of voters on Sunday mailed their ballots.
But there are more safeguards here than across the pond.
In America, some states send mail-in ballots to every voter, with no checks and balances on what happens to the ballots that go unused. Washington State accepts ballots postmarked by election day as late as 21 days after the election.
In Germany, mail-in ballots show up only at your home address if you requested one and must be received by election officials by 6 p.m. on election day.
You receive a voting certificate, called a “Wahlschein,” if you request a ballot by mail, and the Wahlschein must be returned in the mail with the ballot.
If you change your mind and decide to vote in person, you must turn in the Wahlschein at your precinct before they will give you a ballot.
There’s no double voting in Deutschland.
Nor is there ballot harvesting, in which individuals, who are often party workers, will gather dozens or hundreds of ballots from voters and submit them at a polling place. Only on a rare occasion, such as when a voter literally can’t sign a ballot, can you submit a ballot for someone else in Germany.
There are also rigorous safeguards when votes are counted, noted a recent story in Deutsch Welle.
“Members of the public are generally allowed to observe the election process, including the counting of votes, without having to demonstrate a particular interest or affiliation. This applies to postal ballot counting as well,” according to the online news outlet.
“That means election officials do not simply open postal ballots and count them behind closed doors. The process is conducted by election boards, whose work can be observed by members of the public and each parties’ representatives.
Talk about open and transparent.
Volker Moritzen, a school teacher from West Berlin, and a good friend, has been a poll worker for decades. He is now in charge of volunteers working at his neighborhood polling place.
His speech to the volunteers working with him is the same every year.
“We have to follow the rules and we have to be neutral,” he said he tells them.
“The most important thing is that everything is secret, that no one knows how anyone voted. And the rules are the same for everyone, no matter who you are or where you come from.”
“Our system works very well,” Volker added. “It’s accurate. And because we have paper ballots and no machines, it can’t be manipulated.
“Things here are very transparent.”
An aside here – Germany’s two establishment parties, the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and liberal Social Democrats (SPD) – got crushed in recent elections. The Left Party (Die Linke), remnant of the old East German Communist Party, won in Berlin with 26 percent of the vote and will attempt to form a coalition government.
In Mecklenburg-West Pomerania and Saxony-Anhalt, the winner was the AfD (Alternative for Germany), a right-wing party that many, including the German government, say has pro-Nazi tendencies.
Is Nazism making a comeback in Germany?
I’m not an expert but I don’t think so.
I have yet to meet a German who speaks well of Hitler. Indeed, most Germans remain terribly ashamed of their troubled history, even though they had nothing to do with World War II or the Holocaust. The Germans I know are three or four generations removed from the war, yet the guilt, and fear of Nazism, remains prevalent.
True, when we vacationed in rural East Germany this summer, where the AfD is strongest, we overheard people spewing resentment toward immigrants. And the AfD has some repugnant policy planks.
Renewing Germany’s old friendship with Vladimir Putin while Russia is in the midst of its brutal invasion of Ukraine is one of the more irrational AfD proposals, as is its pledge to expel millions of immigrants, including Ukrainian refugees. Many immigrants serve Germany as doctors, nurses, engineers and IT professionals. Germany would not function without some immigration.
But I agree with several European political scientists, including East German expert Katja Hoyer, who say they believe that many, if not most, AfD voters are simply expressing their frustration at the establishment parties, and not sympathy for Nazi principles.
Young people, especially, are angry that nobody seems to be addressing their concerns, including controlling Germany’s borders, Hoyer said in a recent podcast.
“I don’t think we’re witnessing a repeat of history,” she said, referring to the 1930s, when the Nazis rose to power.
Politicians should focus on fixing Germany’s problems rather than obsessing about the AfD, she added.
Clearly, the German economy is hurting. Inflation is raging, infrastructure here is in a sorry state, the war in Ukraine is draining billions of dollars and has raised the fears of another world war. And, yes, many here believe Germany has allowed too many immigrants who don’t necessarily share western values.
But even amongst all the discord, I don’t hear anyone questioning election results.
Politicians on the losing end blamed themselves or the economy for their losses, not the people who counted votes.
Trust in the electoral process is a must for a free Democracy to thrive, and Democracy is very much alive in Germany. The USA would be wise to emulate much of its remarkably simple and efficient election system.
Harry Minium is a retired journalist living in Berlin, Germany. Email him at harryminiumjr@gmail.com
