Snap German election leaves many expats excluded from vote

German citizens who live abroad are reporting they didn’t receive their absentee ballots with enough time to return them to be counted in Sunday’s election.

“For the first time in my life, I was unable to vote in a national election,” wrote Karl Doemens, the United States correspondent for the German Newsrooms Network in Washington. “Done. Over,” he added.

Doemens said he was “pissed off” — and thousands of Germans are in the same situation, he posted on Bluesky.

Germany is heading for a pivotal election which will be a gauge of how far the world’s third-largest economy swings to the right. The conservatives are set to come in first place, with the far right polling to win around a fifth of the vote.

After Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government collapsed last November, a new national vote was proposed for Feb. 23 — made official after the government lost a confidence motion in December.

That left voting authorities only two months to set everything up, including compiling, printing and mailing out ballots. The German government set a Feb. 2 deadline for absentee voters to apply — which was also possible via email.

But local voting authorities then had a mere three weeks to not only send the ballots out, but also receive them back.

Unlike, for example, in the United States — where absentee voters must have their ballots postmarked by election day at the latest — the German system says ballots must be received by the end of election day. The last emptying of the mailbox is 6 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 23.

No online voting

The German system does not allow for voting online or returning ballots via email. Nor does it permit citizens to vote in a local embassy or consulate, as many countries do.

Disenfranchised German voters are weighing their options.

Bernd Hüttemann, who heads up the European Movement Germany network, said this issue was a big topic for Germans in Belgium at a meeting for Brussels-based member organizations this week. “Many German interest groups in Brussels are considering legal action,” he told POLITICO.

This could even culminate in a challenge to the entire election.

German public media outlet ZDF reported that Munich sent absentee ballots out on Feb. 3; Stuttgart on Feb. 4; and Hamburg on Feb. 8. Smaller German cities may have needed more time — Bonn sent at least some on Feb. 10, according to a postmark seen by POLITICO.

Some Germans reportedly made special trips home, or gave their absentee ballots to acquaintances to drop off in person.

Snail mail fail

For absentee voters in Brussels and elsewhere in Belgium, a two-week strike in the Belgian postal system may have played a role in delaying the ballots’ arrival.

German embassies were exceptionally offering express courier services for people to drop off their ballots — the cutoff in Brussels was 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 20.

“It would make voting abroad incredibly easier if it could be carried out via embassies,” said Fabian Schmidt, a political economist living in Brussels and German citizen who applied for, but did not receive, an absentee ballot in time.

“Votes should be online,” said Caroline Peters, a German living in Flanders north of Brussels. She did receive her ballot by mail with enough time to send it back, but still advocated the digital option. “It works and goes fast and does not cost anything,” she said.

Although some 4 million Germans live abroad, a far smaller number are eligible voters and have registered to vote by mail. German daily Zeit reported record-high interest in voting by mail during this contentious election, with some 210,000 citizens applying to vote outside of Germany.

But for those who never saw ballots, their vote simply won’t count.

“My experience: Frustration,” said Reinhard Boest, an editor with the website Belgieninfo.net in Brussels. He applied for voting by mail in November and never received his ballot. “Expat Germans apparently don’t matter in politics,” he concluded.

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