The Conservative Chancellor’s candidate folded his ballot paper in the wrong way before putting it in the ballot box, and it was clear which party he voted for.
German Conservative Chancellor candidate Armin Laschet has been ridiculed on social media for a mistake on election day, Reuters reported.
The agency notes that before that, during the election campaign, he made humiliating blunders that damaged his popularity.
According to German election rules, voters must keep their vote secret until they leave the polling station. But when he exercised his right to vote in his constituency in the city of Aachen, Lashet folded his ballot paper in the wrong way before putting it in the ballot box, which showed which party he voted for.
The election commissioner (responsible for the election process in Germany) said his vote would not be declared invalid because he had voted for his party as expected.
“This does not affect the vote,” the commissioner wrote on Facebook.
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Armin Lashet folded his ballot paper incorrectly before putting it in the ballot box, showing who he voted for
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It was no surprise that Laschet had given both his votes for the Christian Democratic Union. According to the German electoral system, the voter votes once for a representative of the 299 constituencies in Germany and a second time for the party that wants to enter parliament.
There is no comment from Lashet yet.
The blunder provoked calls for his vote to be declared invalid, but it was also the subject of mocking comments from national newspapers and social networks, Reuters notes.
“Every child in Germany knows that elections must be universal, free, direct, equal and secret,” the RND newspaper group wrote on its website.
A user named Sven said on Twitter: “Please go to the polls today. And don’t fold your ballots in the same stupid way as Lashet, thank you very much.”
Lachet’s hopes of succeeding Merkel as conservative chancellor were dashed after he failed to convince voters that he had the qualities to take power from her after 16 years.
In July, he was filmed laughing during a visit to a city devastated by Germany’s deadliest floods in more than half a century.
His conservative HDZ / HSS bloc lags behind the German Social Democratic Party by a small margin, giving it little chance of victory.
At 2 pm (3 pm Bulgarian time) turnout was 36.5 per cent – almost 5 percentage points lower than in the previous parliamentary elections in Germany – in 2017. At that time, they had exercised their right to vote. vote 41.1 percent of German voters, recalls Reuters.
AFP notes that the polling stations will close at 6 pm (7 pm Bulgarian time).
About 60.4 million Germans are eligible to vote. A few days before the key elections for the largest European economy, approximately two-fifths of them had not yet decided who to vote for, polls showed.
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