A small group of Democracy Volunteers’ election observers deployed to the German Bundestag elections on Sunday 23rd February, focusing their work on the elections in Berlin.
The team attended several polling stations and were impressed by the commitment and openness of the staff and the process. This was the first time that Democracy Volunteers had deployed a team to Germany for an election.
Whilst most polling stations were very welcoming, a number seemed concerned or unaware that election observers might be a possibility and were not aware of the access granted to observers. The system in Germany is that anyone, whether domestic or foreign, can be in a polling station and can, de facto, observe an election. Only the formal act of voting is secret and is done in a booth.
Although Germany is technically in line with the spirit of the 1990 Copenhagen Agreement, to which it is a signatory, the lack of clarity over how the ‘presence of observers, both foreign and domestic, can enhance the electoral process for States in which elections are taking place,’ should be clarified so that polling staff are briefed and conscious of the roles and rights of election observers.
Commenting, Dr John Ault, director of Democracy Volunteers, said;
‘The German authorities were very welcoming of election observers we were made very welcome in most polling stations. Like all election processes, none are perfect and depend on the commitment and dedication of a large number of volunteers.
‘However, we would encourage two things from our observations which we will be recommending to the German authorities – one is the formalisation of role of observers.
‘The second, and possibly more impactful on trust in the election process within Germany, is that there should be a number of pilot projects for centralised counting. Whilst counting in polling stations can be quick, it can also lead to errors at a low level which can undermine trust in the election process, indeed one of our teams saw that counting began in one polling station before the verification of the number of ballots had occurred. This would have been less likely to happen at a centralised count where senior staff and parties could oversee the process.
‘None of our teams identified party agents attending counting because of the enormous number of small counts going on across Germany in all polling stations. Thus, oversight, and consequently greater trust in the result is limited, as parties simply cannot mount such an enormous mobilisation of resources to election counts, especially for smaller parties.’
