Germans living abroad are calling for sweeping electoral reforms after postal delays have prevented some of them from voting in Sunday’s critical federal election.
Under the current rules, the German diaspora cannot vote in their local embassies or consulates, nor can they ask a proxy to cast a ballot on their behalf back home.
Instead, they have to rely on the often unreliable international postal system.
Speaking to Euronews, German expats in Europe and further afield expressed their disappointment about not being able to decide the political future of their country.
They said they felt particularly aggrieved at their lack of democratic participation given the stakes of this year’s election.
Sunday’s snap election comes after the November collapse of the Social Democrats’ (SPD) coalition with the Greens and the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP). Part of their disagreement was over how best to revive the sluggish German economy.
Currently, polling suggests that the centre-right CDU-CSU alliance will gain 30% of the vote, the AfD will receive around 20%, and the SPD will come third with just over 15%.
Also, for the first time in the country’s post-World War II history, the far right is expected to finish second, with the rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) alarming parts of the community, who remain uneasy about its polarising stances and the effect the party might have on the society back home.
However, instead of having their vote count, the voters abroad now worry it’s all for nothing.
‘Banal’ reasons not to cast one’s ballot
Jan Eijking, an international relations researcher at Oxford University, is one of the Germans abroad who feels frustrated by the postal delays.
Although he registered in time, Eijking was still waiting for his ballot on Thursday in Belgium, where his partner lives.
“It seems astonishing to me that because of something as banal as postal delays that I won’t be able to cast my vote. It’s especially frustrating in an election that at least in my view is as critical as this one,” he said.
Even if the letter reaches him on Friday and he returns it by express delivery, Eijking doubts it would arrive in Germany before the 6 pm CET deadline on Sunday.
“It’s already obviously hard to feel like you’re part of the conversation that’s going on in Germany if you don’t live there,” he said.
“And if you’re facing these barriers to voting in a German national election on top of that, it might just increase the distance that you have between Germans living abroad and German politics back in Germany.”
The academic, who grew up in Hamburg, thinks the voting system has to be brought into the 21st century. “I do think something needs to change to avoid cases like this,” he said.
For him, the solution need not be drastic. It could be as simple as giving postal voters a larger time window to send back their ballots.
Looking for a way to vote
Others in Eijking’s situation suggested the problem could be solved by allowing votes to be cast in embassies and consulates overseas or by permitting proxy voting.
Meanwhile, some of those who have already managed to send off their votes remain worried that they might not count.
Friedrich Ernst, who has lived in the UK for 33 years, said he returned his election papers on 10 February. However, as of Thursday, he had not had confirmation that his letter had been received.
“I’ve been looking constantly over the last couple of days about what’s going on with this letter. And it still hasn’t arrived in the German voting office,” Ernst told Euronews.
It is unclear just how many members of the German diaspora have been affected by the postal delays. However, more Germans are eligible to vote from abroad than in the previous election.
Of the roughly 4 million German expats, 210,000 registered to vote on Sunday, significantly more than the 130,000 who did so four years ago.
The Federal Returning Officer did not respond to a request for comment about the voting problems experienced by the German diaspora.
Gerhard Petri and Maike Windhorst, who originally come from Brunswick in Lower Saxony but who now live in England, are confident their votes will count, thanks to a new courier system from embassies abroad.
However, they both believe there is room for significant improvement.
“Our rights are not really taken care of enough. I would love to vote directly in the embassy like the French do,” Windhorst said.
“I think this election in particular has brought about a debate — at least among people abroad — about whether things could be done better. The system needs to be fixed in one way or the other,” Petri added.
