2021 German Federal Election

Armin, lass et!

But I have no reason to hope that he won’t be our next chancellor. Schlaf, Michel, schlaf…
Well… it seems you and me both did underestimate Armin there. Despite the fact that he tried to hide as much as possible (cancelling or denying countless interview and discussion requests), he somehow still managed to say dumb shit every single time he went in front of any camera anywhere…

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Anyway the CXU officially kicked off their campaign yesterday (???), so let’s see what that’s going to be like.
According to Spiegel there have been voices in the CXU talking openly about changing their candidate and openly putting laschet posters where „they’re going to do the least harm“ (I.e. where nobody will vote CDU anyway).
 
So. Election day is in two weeks, we just had another TV debate with all three candidates for being chancellor.... which I didn't watch. Because me having to listen to this CDU clown who I fear will be our next chancellor would seriously put my TV in danger of being killed by a flying remote. Also, I have already voted - today, via mail-in voting.

So, it's unclear how tonight's debate shifted the polls, but before that, it looked lioke the SPD may actually win this election. See this handy summary of the latest polls by different pollsters. For the too linky, didn't click folks:
SPD at 25-26%, CDU/CSU at about 21%, Greens at 15-17%, FDP a bit below that, Linke at 6%. I'll ignore the AfD because no one else will work with them anyway.

These current polls make me fear that the CDU/CSU might turn this around and win, again. If not, the SPD will. In any case, the Greens have totally lost their momentum and are in serious danger to end up in the opposition again.
I see the following possibly coalitions:
  • CDU/CSU and SPD: The continuation of the current government, only with Laschet replacing Merkel. The worst possible outcome, damning the country to another four years of standstill.
  • SPD and CDU/CSU: Same parties, but with Scholz as chancellor. Not that much better.
  • SPD, CDU/CSU and FDP: If the first two don't get enough votes and need a third party, I think the FDP is the easier partner to work with compared to the Greens.
  • SPD, Greens and Linke: It's a really close call if this is even possible. In any case, this would be a very hard thing to keep up, because the Linke have some wackos in their ranks who are prone to be trouble, and with only a paper-thin majority that's hard to deal with. But this is also the best chance of keeping the CDU/CSU out of the governing coalition.
You'll notice that there are some options missing. SPD and Greens won't get enough votes to form a two-party coalition and will need a third party to form a government. If that's not the Linke, CDU/CSU and FDP are the leftover options. Both of them have no reason to go into a SPD/Green coalition as the third wheel when they can have a CDU/CSU/FDP/SPD coalition in which the SPD will bend over to their will anyway. Which the SPD will do, as they have proven time and again. And even for the SPD it's much more comfortable to form a government with CDU/CSU and FDP than with those pesky Greens.

I really hope I'm wrong, but the outlook is very bleak. I basically just hope the SPD can maintain their lead over the CDU/CSU, so Laschet won't become our next chancellor. He is just unfit to be a political leader: A few years ago, when working as a university lecturer, he lost some exams, so with nothing to base the grades on, he just made them up. Which of course got noticed (he gave grades to students who didn't even take the exam). This summer during the floods, he laughed his ass off at a joke while standing in the background as the President of Germany held a speech in a flooded town, live on national TV.
And just a couple of days ago, there was a court ruling declaring the clearing of a protest camp against surface mining that the state government of Northrhine-Westfalia - of which he is Prime Minister - ordered was against the law. The clearing was justified with the blatantly lame pretext of the tree houses built by the protesters in a forest that was to be destroyed to make way for the mine were not conforming to fire protection rules for buildings. Laschet was even caught on tape admitting publicly that he needed a pretext to order the clearing. And the kicker is: During that clearing, a protester was killed due to this illegal police action which Laschet has personally ordered, in full knowledge of the illegality of it.
This sorry excuse for a politician must not become chancellor. Not only is he obviously unfit to hold any position of power and responsibility, he is also a total lightweight and can't handle crises at all. I bet foreign governments like the Russians and Chinese would be very glad to negotiate with him.

On the other side of the political battle, this week saw the Berlin police search the Federal Ministry of Finance, which is lead by the SPD chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz, on the order of the district attourney's office of the small town of Osnabrück in the West German province. The reasoning is suspicion that leading members of the Financial Intelligence Unit, which is tasked with battling large scale money laundering, have allegedly deliberately not passed on information to other authorities, thus letting money launderers get away. This is just grand, and this short before the election it stinks.

You notice that I didn't talk about Baerbock. That's because the Greens are largely irrelevant right now. The Zeitgeist is completely on their side, yet they manage to totally tank...
 
So, tomorrow is election day.

Nothing much has changed since my last post. Everything points to a three-party coalition with Greens and FDP teaming up either with SPD or CDU/CSU - Greens prefer SPD, FDP prefers CDU/CSU. I am still sceptical about the SPD not just entering another "grand coalition" with the CDU/CSU, but I think this would only come to pass when both other options don't work out.

Germans, go vote tomorrow if you haven't used mail-in/early voting already!
 
Things are already starting to get ridiculous… honestly, is this the first time this doofus votes or something???

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For clarification: votes are supposed to be secret, so he folded his ballot wrong (on purpose, as the same situation with his wife implies). Thus, his & her votes should both be invalid. Dumbasses.

Edit: someone already filed charges against the photographer (unknown) and the editor in chief of BILD for publishing this. If it’s illegal to take a selfie inside the booth, then this bullshit sure as hell is as well…
 
If it’s illegal to take a selfie inside the booth, then this bullshit sure as hell is as well…
I can look it up after 6 o'clock since I am a polling clerk (for the first time, I volunteered). AFAIR the press is allowed to take pictures inside the polling station, but private citizens aren't.

In the constituency I volunteer the turnout seems to be quite good, about 40% did postal voting and the turnout in person wasn't bad in the five hours I had my shift. I'll have to be there around 6 o'clock again to count the votes.
 
Cologne just started numbers up to 14:00h, about 1% more than last time around… negligible I’d say.

Yeah the illegality of the picture and publishing it is highly doubtful to me tbh - it’s pretty dumb. The crap that laschet is pulling here is much worse. I do hope the wrongly folded ballot gets pulled as invalid later, during counting? It shouldn’t have made it into the urn tbh, but a we can all see, it clearly did (despite the fact that the padlock is open…).
 
For clarification: votes are supposed to be secret, so he folded his ballot wrong (on purpose, as the same situation with his wife implies). Thus, his & her votes should both be invalid. Dumbasses.
The list of invalidation reasons doesn't include revealing the vote, so there's no legal basis for invalidating it: http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bwahlg/__39.html

Publishing that photo before 6pm could be considered technically illegal: http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bwahlg/__32.html
 
Top candidate of a party and his wife vote for that party. Well, it would be news if they voted for someone else.

The possibly open ballot box is more concerning in my opinion. It is not. That has already been checked. It's just a weird-looking padlock. Yes, I was just on the phone with the office of the Landeswahlleiter. No, I wasn't the first one to call. :D

@Eye-Q: Thanks for volunteering. Your service for democracy is appreciated. :)
 
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The list of invalidation reasons doesn't include revealing the vote, so there's no legal basis for invalidating it: http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bwahlg/__39.html

Publishing that photo before 6pm could be considered technically illegal: http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bwahlg/__32.html
Armin does violate http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bwahlg/__34.html though. no idea what that means for the vote though, as a violation of this isn't listed in §39... :| bad laws are bad? anyway: the person guarding the urn should have prevented this ballot from being cast in this case, seems to be the prevailing twitter opinion (yes yes...)

regarding publishing: how is "re-publishing" handled? because verybody and their mums is now posting that picture everywhere... is it a free-for-all once the first publication takes the blame? :D

Et hätt noch emmer joot jejange. :D
technically more of a Cologne saying, less Aachen, no? :think:
 
Armin does violate http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bwahlg/__34.html though. no idea what that means for the vote though, as a violation of this isn't listed in §39... :| bad laws are bad? anyway: the person guarding the urn should have prevented this ballot from being cast in this case, seems to be the prevailing twitter opinion (yes yes...)

regarding publishing: how is "re-publishing" handled? because verybody and their mums is now posting that picture everywhere... is it a free-for-all once the first publication takes the blame? :D
Yeah, no doubt that it's wrong to fold it like that... however, it doesn't make the vote invalid as BILD likes to scream.

As for republishing, no clue. Probably technically also not allowed, but nobody's going to care.
 
technically more of a Cologne saying, less Aachen, no? :think:
It’s equally called the “Cologne Basic Law” and the “Rhineland Basic Law”, including Aachen, so I hope to FSM that it doesn’t apply to Armin Lass Et’s campaign. Otherwise… see my previous reply.
 
Yeah, no doubt that it's wrong to fold it like that...
this is something i don't understand... what are the consequences then? :dunno:

anyway... back in berlin, they seem to be surprised by the number of people showing up to vote or something? nobody could've possibly known how many people belong in one voting district, could they? :| [translation: they ran out of ballots.]

It’s equally called the “Cologne Basic Law” and the “Rhineland Basic Law”, including Aachen, so I hope to FSM that it doesn’t apply to Armin Lass Et’s campaign. Otherwise… see my previous reply.
yeah, fair enough, really... just grasping at straws :D
 
anyway... back in berlin, they seem to be surprised by the number of people showing up to vote or something? nobody could've possibly known how many people belong in one voting district, could they? :| [translation: they ran out of ballots.]
Apparently some of the ballots were in the wrong polling stations. There might be some boxes of ballots still in the wrong polling stations so the ones where they belong now run out of ballots.

Additionally (but not related to polling stations running out of ballots) apparently an unusual amount of polling clerks cancelled their participation, about 200 to 250 in the last days before the election. The article I linked speculates about people registering in spring just to get an earlier covid vaccination, but now that everybody who wants a vaccination can have it regardless of pre-existing conditions they all have their vaccinations so their participation wouldn't gain them anything. If that is the case then those people are despicable...
 
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