Shortly before the general election, it was circulating Telegram a video showing a man prying open a locked ballot box with two knives on the back. The man claims that this is what all urns look like that are “currently standing around in every town hall, in every authority”. For example, the video says: “This is how electoral fraud works in Germany! Never thought it would be so easy with the urns. ”The video was broadcast on several Telegram channels on September 22nd. on Facebook it was already circulating in February 2021.
The man in the video says the urns are out of date and only have two locks at the back instead of three. He speaks of an election in Thuringia, where allegedly an urn was opened in this way.
It apparently refers to a photo that circulated on the network in 2019 after the state election in Thuringia and showed a ballot box open at the back. Like us in one Fact check researched, an urn was actually broken into there. A spokeswoman for the office of the regional returning officer informed us at the time that a person had forcibly opened the back of the urn and took a photo. Such a thing is possible with “enough criminal energy”. But at that time there was no election fraud.
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We also asked the press office of the Federal Returning Officer: “We know this video, it has been circulating for months and suggests that ballot boxes are unsafe,” a spokeswoman wrote to us. In principle, there is no such thing as a “single ballot box”, so it is impossible to say which ballot boxes are generally used where.
Federal Returning Officer: Ballot boxes are always protected against unauthorized access
The spokeswoman makes it clear: “The decisive safeguard is that the ballot box is always protected against unauthorized access or unlawful opening. (…) This is guaranteed by the continuous occupation of the voting area with electoral workers as well as by the public. ”
That goes according to the Website of the Federal Returning Officer as follows: “On election day, the electoral committee makes sure that the ballot box is empty before voting begins. The electoral officer then closes the ballot box. It must not be opened until the end of the election. ”The urn is therefore never unobserved and not accessible for any attempt at manipulation.
According to the Federal Returning Officer, the municipal authorities are responsible for ballot boxes. You have to do it following specifications The following are stipulated in the federal election regulations: The ballot box must have a lid and be lockable and have a gap of no more than two centimeters in the lid for inserting the ballot papers. There is no requirement that additional seals be affixed to ballot boxes.
Edited by: Alice Echtermann, Uschi Jonas
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