Status: 19.09.2021 10:26 a.m.
–
–
–
The proportion of postal voters has been increasing for years, and in the federal election it is likely to be particularly high due to Corona. According to a survey, the number of postal voting documents requested has already doubled in some large cities.
One week before the general election, a significant increase in the number of postal voters can be expected, especially in the big cities. According to a survey by “Welt am Sonntag”, the cities of Frankfurt am Main and Bremen sent twice as many postal voting documents as at the same time before the last federal election.
According to this, Frankfurt am Main has sent 160,500 postal voting documents so far – almost twice as many as in the 2017 election in the same period. Bremen also recorded a doubling to currently more than 130,000 postal voting slips. In other large cities such as Berlin, Hamburg, Düsseldorf and Munich, significantly more people applied for postal votes.
Information from the election officers of the federal states confirm the development. According to “Welt”, the percentage of postal voters in Rhineland-Palatinate is already 41 percent. In North Rhine-Westphalia, 29.5 percent of those eligible to vote have so far applied for voting by letter. In 2017 it was 17 percent at the same time.
The percentage of postal votes is increasing steadily
The proportion of people who vote by postal vote and not at the polling station has been increasing steadily in federal elections since reunification. Whereas in 1990 only 9.4 percent of voters cast their vote in this way, in 2017 it was already 28.6 percent. Federal Returning Officer Georg Thiel expects a stronger increase than usual this year, mainly because of the corona pandemic. According to Thiel, this is not a cause for concern: the postal vote is safe, so far there have been no significant irregularities.
There were only a few cases, for example of incompletely printed ballot papers where a circle was missing next to the party name, “Thiel told the editorial network Germany (RND) on Saturday. Ballot papers that had already been sent were immediately replaced with newly printed ones.” In the few cases , for which an exchange was no longer possible, the votes cast retain their validity. We are not aware of any irregularities that could affect the election result, “said Thiel.
Increase in hoax
The polling officer also said that his agency is currently registering an increase in the number of false reports. “Due to the increasing importance of social media, we perceive an increased number of false reports about the electoral process and especially with regard to postal voting,” Thiel told the RND. That is why he and the regional election officers informed about the election process and all important regulations “proactively, comprehensively and on various channels”.
–
