Germany’s Interior Minister says it crucial that (unlike in the United States) the voting process for the upcoming federal election takes place without voting machines.
This “old school” approach is “half the life insurance” for an election without manipulations, he added. At a press conference on Wednesday flanked by the heads of Germany’s election authority, domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, and cybersecurity agency, the BSI, German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer laid out the security threats to Germany’s election and how the authorities are planning to fend them off. Thiel was also keen to underline the fact that Germany does not use voting machines, like in the US.
“We don’t have a situation with voting machines that we may know from the US. The actual voting procedure at the polling station is old school,” said Thiel. “When I explained to a senior official from the Interior Ministry recently that it works with paper and pencil, he said, ‘that reassures me’.” “We have no voting machines — at the end of the day, it’s the ballot paper that gets counted,” he said. Thiel also went on to stress that any citizen has the right to walk in and watch the votes being counted.
