Elections in Germany - absence of voter caging,manipulated machines,disenfrachisement

[Aroddo]

Today was voting day for the german federal state of Northrhine-Westphalia - the most densely populated state.

In every town and village of that state dozens of polling stations were set up, usually withing walking distance. Voting took place from 10 am to 6 pm and there were no waiting lines to be seen.
Complete absence of voter harrassment, misleading information or discrimination.
Everyone knew exactly when and where to go to ... mostly because every citizen got a letter telling them where to go and what to bring (election voting card and ID - every German has a 'Personalausweis'. Mandatory. Doesn't cost much either.).

No voting machines anywhere. Banned by the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht).
Why? Because every citizen must be able to check the correctness of the voting process without requiring him to possess any special technical knowledge. Or short: Transparency and accountability.
Good old cardboard boxes and paper slips and lots of voluntary manpower. We never vote when an important football game is happening.

At 6pm the voting stations closes and the votes are counted and the result phoned in to the 'Rathaus' (aka city hall, very clean, no rodents anywhere). Those numbers make up the preliminary results. I'm not sure if the votes get counted a second time or if they do that only in case the results are close. But they always got a notary at hand, so everything is nice and proper.

And finally the paper ballot. It is practically impossible to mess it up, but some manage to do it anyway. Most people make their Xs inside the circle, but even if you paint a smiley inside it, it's still counted as a correct vote as long as it smiles in the correct place. Election helpers are encouraged to guess the "voter's intent".
You have two votes. One for the district candidate (on the left) and one for the party.

Anyway, voting is easy, transparent, accountable, fast and so organized that we can't really understand why other less experienced countries and the USA struggle so much with the process. It's downright boring here! No nuts telling us that "God wants you to vote the Christian Democratic Union (CDU)" either.
Oh, and all results are either downloadable from the federal state website or presented in other ways. like this: http://karten.wahlergebnisse.nrw.de/WahlClient/

Cheers and Arrr!

 

[kronic]

@Thread and OP

 

[metatron]

[...]

 

[anandus]

So... What's this thread about?

What are those 2 votes for? I'm not sure what a wahlkreis is, but the one on the right is for the federal parliament?

Re: Voting machines
It's the same here in the Netherlands, and rightly so. The voting process must be as simple and transparant as possible.
We've used voting computers until 8 years ago or something and then the government banned them.

 

[Masada]

Eh, somewhat similar process here (in Australia). Except we don't have voting cards and we aren't told to vote (provided it's inside the electorate boundaries). I just use my drivers license. We also postpone elections for football. And there's some 'voter caging' but mostly it revolves around me chatting to friends handing out 'how to vote' cards for the various parties. We also pay our election people (not altogether awful money either) to do it.

Here's our ballot papers.

New Zealand's is a mixed member proportional setup which is fairly similar to Germany's system. It however has a separate Maori list, Maori can vote on.

 

[Quackers]

I do not really understand the purpose of this thread. Although I have guessed the OP wants to share a few good points about German voting and how unfathomable that American messes it up. Weird.

Anyway for the purpose of comparison here is a British polling card:

 

[anandus]

For flavour, here's the voting ballot in the Netherlands, it's quite large, only about a quarter is visible here.
It are the parties from left to right and in the columns are the people in that party whom you can vote for. Yo choose only one. No numbering, no choosing multiple people or parties (that will invalidate your ballot).

Oh, and in the Netherlands we also postpone elections for important football matches. And summer holidays.
(Our government collapsed in april, we could have elections in june, but it's the european football championships then, so that's a no-go, and after that it's the summer holidays and the Olympics, so now the elections are in september... Hmmm)

 

[Masada]

I like how the Brits have to have pictures to make sure their voters understand the party they're voting for.

 

[Aroddo]

Aroddo, while i do agree with some of the points in your post and actually find them somewhat significant, i am confident that those among our American friends who do care already know this.
So essentially you are kind of trolling people with a wikipedia entry here.

Oh and good job how you brushed over the authoritarian ID nonsense we got ourselves into. I guess i'll be repeatedly fined once 2017 comes around. (I should have renewed my ID in order to go for the full 12/2020...).

Well ... kinda, I guess. On the other hand our American friends seem to take too many infractions on their civil rights for granted while on the other hand they take tremendous issue with things like the ID.
For example, in many states convicted felons get their right to vote taken from them permanently while the number of incarcerations for minor misdemeanors go rapidly up all while minorities like blacks or latinos are specifically targeted - groups who are majorly voting democratic. What I see is the erosion of civil rights for party politics.

And I really don't understand the issues some have with ID. Every citizen is registered anyway for the purpose of taxation, social security and driving. So what if you have an ID that can also be used to validate with state guarantee that you are who you are?

Btw: Did you guys answer the Neo-Nazis-in-Germany question in the thread in the Tavern?
Doing so, and doing so comprehensively, should be a priority, at least compared to... this.

Actually yes, we did. Extensively. Funny you should ask here instead of reading that there.

For flavour, here's the voting ballot in the Netherlands, it's quite large, only about a quarter is visible here.
It are the parties from left to right and in the columns are the people in that party whom you can vote for. Yo choose only one. No numbering, no choosing multiple people or parties (that will invalidate your ballot).

I imagine you get need a map to orient yourself on that gigantic ballot?

Eh, somewhat similar process here (in Australia). Except we don't have voting cards and we aren't told to vote (provided it's inside the electorate boundaries).

I didn't know you could vote an entire hit-list of candidates. I wonder if that system yields different results than our 2 vote system.

So... What's this thread about?

What are those 2 votes for? I'm not sure what a wahlkreis is, but the one on the right is for the federal parliament?

Re: Voting machines
It's the same here in the Netherlands, and rightly so. The voting process must be as simple and transparant as possible.
We've used voting computers until 8 years ago or something and then the government banned them.

A Wahlkreis would be a district, I guess. With the first vote you determine the person representing that district. The second vote determines how many seats a party gets in the Landtag, which would be the state parliament.

Re:Re: Voting machines
We got rid of voting machines in 2009 ... and we both did it because of the same incident!
„Wij vertrouwen stemcomputers niet“ and the german "Chaos Computer Club (CCC)" demonstrated 2006 on dutch TV how easy those computers could be manipulated and how hard it was to figure out any manipulation took place!
German-Dutch coorporation! It exists!!

I do not really understand the purpose of this thread. Although I have guessed the OP wants to share a few good points about German voting and how unfathomable that American messes it up. Weird.

Anyway for the purpose of comparison here is a British polling card:

Cool pictures. The one with the best logo wins!
Reminds me on how they solved the voting process problem in some african country with a very low literacy rate. Is that the same reason you got the pictures?

 

[Mise]

The polling times are a bit narrow don't you think?

 

[anandus]

I imagine you get need a map to orient yourself on that gigantic ballot?

Most people just vote for the number one of their desired party, so it isn't that hard, but yeah, it can be a bit overwhelming.

Re:Re: Voting machines
We got rid of voting machines in 2009 ... and we both did it because of the same incident!
„Wij vertrouwen stemcomputers niet“ and the german "Chaos Computer Club (CCC)" demonstrated 2006 on dutch TV how easy those computers could be manipulated and how hard it was to figure out any manipulation took place!
German-Dutch coorporation! It exists!!

Ah, 6 years ago, thought it was 8. Well close enough

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Oh, great. A pirate voter.
Last year I was optimistic about the pirates and compared them to the Green Party during the eigties, but now I can't take them seriously
The Pirate Party today -at least in NRW- is pretty incompetent. They need at least four more years of development until they deserve to be above 5%.
They pretty much said everything from taxes to education and environmental protection is negotiable for them as long they can push their position on intellectual property.
Now it's OK to be a single issue party but you at least need understand the issue. They are even clueless about intellectual property laws and have shown in interviews that they don't know how GEMA works. Not to mention that even if they end up in government they won't be able to make the reforms they want because of the EU and WTO.

 

[kronic]

People vote for them because the other parties messed and mess up. I myself consider voting for them, too. It's not that I expect them to do anything, it's just a way to express my disenchantment other than going for NPD or MLPD or staying at home.

 

[anandus]

What I find weirdest about the German pirate party is that they decide on their party views on issues through internet polls (if I understood correctly).
Unless it's mandatory for all members, don't you get a certain 'rule of the vocal minority'?
Ironically through so-called democratic methods you get a very undemocratic party.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

People vote for them because the other parties messed and mess up. I myself consider voting for them, too. It's not that I expect them to do anything, it's just a way to express my disenchantment other than going for NPD or MLPD or staying at home.

MLPD ? Why not Die Linke ? They have some funny ideas, but as far as protest votes go they are the least dangerous.
At this point I really believe it's better to stay at home than to vote pirates in order to not contribute to the undeserved hype. it's fince if they get ~5% so they can gain some experience, but everything more than that is too much.

What I find weirdest about the German pirate party is that they decide on their party views on issues through internet polls (if I understood correctly).
Unless it's mandatory for all members, don't you get a certain 'rule of the vocal minority'?

Well, that's how democracy should work. I have nothing against it in principle, it's just that the party os too young and clueless in geenral to deserve as many votes as they get. At least they have spoken out against neo-nazis which tend to flock to every party that concerns itself with civil right.

 

[kronic]

MLPD ? Why not Die Linke ? They have some funny ideas, but as far as protest votes go they are the least dangerous.
At this point I really believe it's better to stay at home than to vote pirates in order to not contribute to the undeserved hype. it's fince if they get ~5% so they can gain some experience, but everything more than that is too much.

Die Linke doesn't really shock anyone anymore. The other four parties more or less both accepted and for now even contained their advance. They just exist but for now they don't make other parties ask themselves anymore what they did wrong. Besides, I do think that they offer by far the best analysis on why the Euro is failing. It's just their proposed response that I find dead wrong. Since I think that the Euro is the most important issue in politics right now, I can't seriously vote for them.

 

[luiz]

Funny related topic, every time there is an election in Brazil there is a massive national circle jerk about how awesome our electronic voting machines, how backwards those foreigners are, and how our system is perfect and unhackeable. Of course, every now and then an university research team manages to hack one of them for testing purposes, and the whole notion of an electronic system that can't be hacked is absurd.

This is our voting machine:

 

[anandus]

Well, that's how democracy should work.

Is it?
To built-in a system to let a party easily be anonymously hijacked? I'm not so sure of the democratic value to be honest.

Also the opportunistic way and lack of coherence between internet polls seems to me to make it an unstable method. It'll be all nimby all the way.
No against austerity and no against government deficit. No against taxes. And yes against free money. And free beer. Things like that.

how backwards those foreigners are

But who are the ones that are backwards? The ones that are using voting machines or the ones that use pen and paper?

 

[kronic]

Is it?
To built-in a system to let a party easily be anonymously hijacked? I'm not so sure of the democratic value to be honest.

Also the opportunistic way and lack of coherence between internet polls seems to me to make it an unstable method. It'll be all nimby all the way.
No against austerity and no against government deficit. No against taxes. And yes against free money. And free beer. Things like that.

Ehm, they have an internet platform for members where they are debating with their full names. I don't see how they are going to get anonymously hijacked.

 

[anandus]

Ehm, they have an internet platform for members where they are debating with their full names. I don't see how they are going to get anonymously hijacked.

The polls will be anonymous, won't they?