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Viewing cable 09FRANKFURT1576, CONGRESSIONAL STAFF DELEGATION OBSERVES GERMAN ELECTION

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Reference ID Created Released Classification Origin
09FRANKFURT1576 2009-06-15 14:20 2011-08-24 01:00 UNCLASSIFIED Consulate Frankfurt
VZCZCXYZ0002
RR RUEHWEB

DE RUEHFT #1576/01 1661420
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 151420Z JUN 09
FM AMCONSUL FRANKFURT
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 0851
INFO RUEHRL/AMEMBASSY BERLIN 0518
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. 
 
----------------------------- 
System Requires Minimum Labor 
----------------------------- 
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. 
 
----------------------------- 
Paper Ballots and Hand Counts 
----------------------------- 
 
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. 
 
 
---------- 
Conclusion 
 
---------- 
 
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