Germany faces major challenges ahead of snap election

The timing of Germany's next election has become the subject of an increasingly embittered political debate that has dragged in the federal election administrator, the managing director of the country's biggest ballot paper printing company and even the head of Germany's paper industry association.

On Tuesday, the governing center-left Social Democrats (SPD) and the opposition center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) had agreed to hold a new parliamentary election on February 23, 2025. That would be around seven months earlier than had been planned, before the governing coalition collapsed last week.

The SPD's coalition partners, the Greens and the Free Democratic Party (FDP), have also agreed to the new date. President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German head of state, has also backed the timeline as "realistic."

The agreement ended several days of wrangling over the logistics of bringing forward a federal election, which would be triggered by the chancellor calling a vote of no confidence in the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag. Once he has lost the vote, as is expected, the president has a maximum of 21 days to dissolve parliament, and after that, the nationwide election must take place within 60 days.

More than 60 million German citizens are eligible to vote: They must be at least 18 years old, have lived in Germany for at least three months and be listed in the electoral register for their place of residence.

Christmas, paper shortages might cause problems

The CDU and the other opposition parties had been trying to bring the election forward to January. Chancellor Olaf Scholz, meanwhile, had initially suggested late March or early April, on the grounds that the government needed time to pass certain laws that had been close to completion, and that the relevant authorities needed time to properly organize an election.

That triggered howls of protest from the conservative opposition and sections of the German media, but the chancellor was backed up at the weekend by the federal election administrator Ruth Brand, who suggested that the Christmas holidays and a shortage of paper might cause problems.

Meanwhile, the CDU accused Scholz of pressuring Brand, who is a member of his SPD, into delivering her warning. "One has the impression that there was political influence," said Jens Spahn, one of the CDU's more outspoken leading figures.

Personnel shortages could mean extra work

Nevertheless, some state electoral commissioners have also warned against a hasty election, particularly in Berlin, where the last election in 2021 had to be partially repeated due to irregularities at some of the polling stations.

"The shorter the notice given for the election day, the more staff will have to be drawn from the district administration to ensure proper preparation for the election," Hauke Haverkamp, a Berlin election official, told the local Tagesspiegel newspaper, suggesting that administrative offices may have to be closed to free up staff to deal with it.

In addition, Haverkamp said a February election meant that a winter road clearance service in front of the polling stations may have to be set up and that staff would have to cancel winter holidays.

Wilko Zicht, head of the nonprofit electoral watchdog Wahlrecht, estimates that authorities will now have to do around four months' worth of work in the span of only two months. "Of course, the number of mistakes rises if you do something hastily," he told DW. "You're more likely to overlook a mistake on the ballot paper, or there's one unreliable printer that can't get the ballot papers ready in time."

'Unfair conditions' for small parties

"For the bigger parties it's not really a problem," said Zicht, given that they would already have started planning for the September 2025 election anyway. "They would already be putting together their candidate lists, so it's not an absolute drama for them."

The more urgent issue, according to Zicht, will be for the smaller political parties, who don't have the resources and the personnel to quickly draw up candidate lists. "Even after they've found the candidates they have to gather enough signatures so that they can be allowed on the ballot paper," he said.

Germany's federal system complicates elections. In each state, parties need to collect signatures equivalent to one-thousandth of the electorate (up to a maximum of 2,000) to be allowed on the ballot. "It's already difficult enough during the winter, but it would be very unfair conditions for the very small parties," said Zicht.

Local authorities, meanwhile, need to find rooms for polling stations, election volunteers and print ballot papers — particularly postal ballots, which must go out well before election day.

Though some warned against precipitous elections, the German Association of Towns and Municipalities (DStGB) insisted that all would be well. "The cities and municipalities will, in any case, be able to implement a proper federal election within the legally prescribed deadlines," it said in a statement on Saturday.

Enough time for postal ballots?

Nevertheless, the postal ballot issue is indeed urgent — particularly for Germans living overseas, not least because, unlike other countries, Germany usually does not allow its citizens to vote in embassies.

Voters are supposed to receive postal ballots at least three weeks before an election, to give them enough time to be sent back — "but that doesn't always work out," said Zicht. "Their votes often don't arrive in time to get counted." That problem is likely to be even more acute this time round.

But all these practical issues are relatively minor compared with the problems that could arise, according to Zicht, when the organization of an election becomes part of the political debate, as it has done this week — and administrators like Ruth Brand get accused of being subject to political influence.

"That is a problem," said Zicht. "I can understand why you would criticize the chancellor because he wants an election at the end of March, clearly because he's hoping to catch up with the opposition by then. But to accuse the election commissioner of partisanship — I find that highly problematic. If you delegitimize the independence of the election organization, then you're really taking an ax to our democracy. We saw four years ago in the US what happens when people begin to question the election — we definitely don't want to import that."

This article was published on November 12, 2024 and updated to include German President Frank Walter Steinmeier's comments on the snap election roadmap.

Edited by: Rina Goldenberg

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