Who Counts, Counts: An Exploratory Analysis of How Local Authorities Organise the Electoral Count in Germany’s Most Populous State

Abstract

The organisation of the electoral counting process is a complex task that, in Germany, is delegated to local authorities. This article presents novel data from a representative survey of local communities in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, to describe and to explain the variation of the ways in which the electoral count for major elections is organised. The findings are: (1) local communities differ greatly in the ways they recruit poll workers for election day and in the ways the counting teams are composed; (2) the inclusion of parties in the recruitment of poll workers, the only main prescription in the legal framework, is not heeded by one third of all local communities, and (3) most importantly, actual election results such as the proportion of invalid votes systematically and widely co-vary with the ways in which local authorities organise the counting process – a pattern that should not exist. This article discusses the implications of these patterns for the electoral integrity of Germany during the electoral administration process.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Achim Goerres is professor of empirical political science and chair of the department of political science at the University of Duisburg-Essen. His research interests cover political behaviour, electoral administration, and the politics of migration and population ageing.

Evelyn Funk is a research associate at the German Development Institute, Bonn, and a PhD candidate at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Her research interest lie in evaluation research, policy effectiveness measurement and the politics of evaluation.

Notes

1 Federal Election Ordinance, 2013 version.

2 Regulations for election boards that count postal votes are slightly different and will not be described here in detail.

3 Federal Election Ordinance, 2013 version.

4 In our qualitative interviews before the standardised survey, we learnt that the local authorities share information and best practice with one another. However, there is no additional regulation from the NRW department of the interior as the department only gets involved with problems of the recruitment process. In summary, there is thus a relatively small legal basis for recruiting the poll workers in NRW (Personal Communication with Markus Tiedtke Referat 111, 3 March 2015, at the Department of the Interior and Local Affairs, Düsseldorf).

5 For some rare poll worker surveys, see Clark and James (2017).

6 We also estimated structural equation models as path models but did not find them too useful as we were not interested in explaining all variance of endogenous variables.

7 The variable approximates a normal distribution but for three outlying communities with higher proportions. Excluding them from the analysis did not change the substantive results.

8 Candidates for the body to be elected are banned from counting, although local councillors can act as poll workers in, for instance, a Bundestag election.