Today is election-day in Germany. Here's how elections are done in Germany: [View all]

[DetlefK]

The parties:

- Tight regulations how much you can donate to a party, but the government subsidizes parties by matching the donations Euro-for-Euro, 1:1.
(There was a case where a small party tried to game the sytem by handing in fraudulent donation-receipts. She had to pay the money back and then some. It almost killed the party for good.)

- Campaign-season ~2 months.



The voters:

- Automatic voter-registration when you get your first official ID.

- Each precinct has its own voter-rolls (making them easy to handle, with only about a thousand names). As such, you can only vote in THAT precinct and if you move to a new adress, the lists are updated on-the-fly. No purge of voter-rolls necessary, because the turn-over is pretty small. (Because there are only so many "John Smiths" living in a given precinct.)



The election:

- About 1 month before election-day, you get an official notification by mail:
* what will be voted on
* where and when you can vote
* the number of your precinct
* your number on your precinct's voter-roll
* how to vote by mail

- Election-days are always Sundays, and the polls are open from 8am to 6pm. ALWAYS.

- Polling-places are set up in the precinct and are usually within walking-distance: at a school, at a church, at a retirement home... You can only vote there, because you're only on that voter-roll. (If you can't make it there, vote by mail.)

- At the polling-place, you hand in the notification you got by mail and your ID. (Sometimes they don't even ask for ID and having the notification is proof enough that you are you.)

- Ballots are pen&paper.

- In each election, you have two votes:
* Your first vote is on which candidate you want to win in your district.
* Your second vote is a popular vote on which party you want in general to win nation-wide.
* The composition of the parliament is calculated from a combination of those two kinds of votes.
* Splitting your vote between two different parties is pretty normal and sometimes done for tactical reasons, when you want to support two parties.



The vote-count:

- All ballots counted by hand.

- You can stay in-person to witness the vote-count, as long as you don't get in anybody's way. You can set up a camera to record the vote-count, as long as the camera is not that close to show what's on individual ballots.

- Polling-place closes at 6pm. First projections usually coming in at ~6.30pm, with updates every 15 minutes or so. On TV, pundits talk about stuff.

- "Preliminary Final Official Result" is declared at 8pm. After that, the numbers barely change anymore.

- "Final Official Result" is declared the next day.