Disinfo: Ballot boxes were not locked at the Bundestag election

Summary

A ballot box in Germany, the richest country in Europe.

No, this is not a printer or an air conditioning box. This is a ballot box for elections in Germany. Can our KOIB systems and modern ballot boxes compete with this element of democratic elections?

The Bundestag election in Berlin in one picture. Sealing is avoided almost everywhere.

Disproof

Disinformation about the German elections for the Bundestag which took place on 26 September 2021.

A picture of a cardboard box with the sign "Bundestag. Throw in here" (location and further details of the picture are unknown) circulating on Russian and German social media suggests that it is a ballot box and that many ballot boxes were not locked during the voting.

This is a false claim. According to § 51 of the German Federal election regulations: "The ballot box must be provided with a lid. (...) It must be lockable", reminds Deutsche Welle.

Thus, a user posted a photo of a broken election seal on Twitter mentioning "election fraud". According to the tweet, the allegation relates to a polling station in the city of Preussisch Oldendorf in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

When asked by DW, Mayor Marko Steiner confirmed that the team at the polling station had been made aware of a broken seal and had investigated it. The result: It was an old seal from a previous election that had not been removed "for whatever reason," said Steiner. "According to the ordinance, the ballot box must be locked. In our case, that is usually with a lock." The electoral board had once again confirmed to the city that it had checked the ballot box before the start of the election, Steiner added. It was empty, after which it was locked with the lock. According to the mayor, the electoral board kept the key until the polling stations were closed. In this case, too, there can be no question of electoral fraud, states DW.

All other claims of the German election fraud were also investigated and rejected so far, see fact-check by DW.

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  • Reported in: Issue 260
  • DATE OF PUBLICATION: 27/09/2021
  • Article language(s) Russian, French
  • Countries and/or Regions discussed in the disinformation: Germany
  • Keywords: Elections
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