Frankfurt / Main (dpa / lhe) – Shortly before the Bundestag election on Sunday, the trend towards postal voting in Hesse is becoming increasingly clear. The city of Frankfurt alone recently sent 173,745 postal voting documents, according to a sample from the German Press Agency (as of September 23). This means that around 40.5 percent of the 428,500 eligible voters in Hesse’s largest city submitted a corresponding application. In the 2017 federal election, the rate was around 22.5 percent.
72,777 postal ballot papers were issued in the state capital Wiesbaden – this corresponds to around 39.6 percent with 183,737 eligible voters. Marburg in central Hesse has a rate of 42.5 percent. There, 23,877 of the 56,235 eligible voters applied for voting by post. Neighboring Giessen reported a quota of almost 39 percent with 61,000 eligible voters and 23,700 voting papers sent out.
The city of Kassel issued 51,064 postal voting documents to 137,257 eligible voters (37.2 percent), the city of Offenbach issued 21,241 corresponding papers to 67,535 eligible voters. The front runner among the cities surveyed was Darmstadt with a rate of 44.3 percent: There, 46,800 of the 105,681 possible voters had the documents sent.
According to earlier information from State Returning Officer Wilhelm Kanther, a trend towards postal voting had already emerged before the corona pandemic. At that time, the proportion of those who did not vote at the polling station was around 30 percent.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210925-99-353071 / 2
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