CONGRESSIONAL STAFF DELEGATION OBSERVES GERMAN ELECTION

UNCLAS FRANKFURT 001576

SIPDIS

FOR CA/ACS
DEPT FOR EUR/EU AND H

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV GE EU
SUBJECT: CONGRESSIONAL STAFF DELEGATION OBSERVES GERMAN ELECTION
PROCEDURES AS OFFICES GIRD FOR EUROPEAN PARLIAMENTARY VOTE


1. (U) SUMMARY: A staff delegation from the House Committee on
Administration visited Elections Offices in Frankfurt and Wiesbaden
with ConOff to explore German procedures for registering voters and
conducting elections on a citywide and national scale.
Substantially all eligible German voters are registered through a
process of central recordkeeping. In a national vote, such as the
June 7 European Parliament elections, a relatively small staff
prepares the voter rolls over a period of months, but manages to
manually count hundreds of thousands of paper ballots within a few
hours of the polls closing.

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System Requires Minimum Labor
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2. On May 28-29, Consulate General Frankfurt welcomed the bipartisan
Congressional staff delegation of Majority Senior Elections Counsel
Thomas Hicks, Majority Deputy Staff Director Teri Morgan, Majority
Elections Counsels Janelle Hu and Jennifer Daehn and Minority
Elections Counsels Peter Schalestock and Karin Moore. The House
Committee on Administration directed the delegation to conduct a
"comparative review of European countries that have implemented
government-initiated, automatic or mandatory voter registration to
maintain current and accurate voter rolls."


3. The director of the Frankfurt Elections Office (Wahlamt)
Hans-Joachim Grochocki told the delegation that virtually every
citizen in Germany who is over 18 years old is eligible to vote and
is registered when applying for any service of the government at the
Citizens Office (Burgeramt). Under German law, every citizen over
16 years of age can register his/her current permanent residence at
the local Burgeramt as well as apply for and carry a national
citizen identification card (Ausweis). Citizens must register a
change of residence at the new location when they move, and thus the
registration is continuous throughout life. This framework provides
generally comprehensive and current identification information on
all citizens. This information in turn can be shared only with
those government agencies that have a direct need to know, such as
the elections office, schools, social services and police agencies.
Regarding grounds for ineligibility to vote, the elections officials
said all citizens remain eligible voters, even after criminal
convictions, although such voters are not eligible to hold public
office.


4. Wiesbaden Elections Office representative Wolf told the
delegation that Wiesbaden, the capital of the state of Hesse, which
also includes Frankfurt, has 275,000 inhabitants and 190,000
eligible voters. (Note: Frankfurt has 600,000 residents and 400,000
eligible voters.) Despite such a high percentage of eligible voters,
the Wiesbaden Elections Office has only three full time employees
and 10 unpaid volunteers who are currently focused on the June 7
European Parliament elections. According to Mr. Wolf, it takes at
least 6 months to prepare the electronic voter rolls. The result is
a printed document that is used at the polls to identify every one
of the city's eligible voters.

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Paper Ballots and Hand Counts
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5. Thirty-five days preceding an election, the Elections Office in
each city mails to every voter an election card derived from the
data in the Burgeramt records together with a printed ballot that
now may be returned by mail without having to make a special request
to vote by absentee ballot. Although voters are not required to
produce the election card at the voting station, they have 21 days
to correct any errors on their cards by appearing in person at the
Elections Office. (Note: Eligibility to vote is also noted on the
Ausweis identification card.) All final handwritten changes are
inserted into the printed election books, which are then distributed
to the relevant polling places. A local committee of residents at
each polling location decides any disputes about the information in
the register or discrepancies therein.


6. The printed ballots for each election are tallied as they are
received by mail at the Elections Office, and a notation is placed
in the local book that the citizen has voted. When a citizen
appears at the poll, the local register is checked to avoid
duplicate voting. After the polls close, the staff and volunteers at
the Elections Office publicly count all ballots by hand, rather than
electronically. Both Wiesbaden and Frankfurt officials estimated
that the counting would be completed within one to three hours.
Turnout at the 2004 European Parliament election was 39% in
Frankfurt and 37% in Wiesbaden, reflecting a lower interest in the
European results than was the case for the Hesse state elections in
2009, when the turnout was 61%, according to the election officials.


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Conclusion

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7. German election officials at the Frankfurt and Wiesbaden
Elections Offices expressed a high degree of confidence in the
integrity, completeness and accuracy of their voter registration
systems. They each stated that computer hacking into the record
systems has not been a problem and the systems have adequate
firewalls to protect the data contained therein. They also stressed
the need for transparency in the registration process and the
counting of ballots. They considered the hand count and paper
ballots preferable to electronic measures.


8. Staffdel Hicks reviewed the substance of this cable.

POWELL