Election day in Germany isn’t until September 24. But what if the decisive votes have already been cast? According to Deutsche Welle, more and more Germans are choosing to vote early, which also changes who loses and who wins.
More people in Germany are skipping the trip to the voting booth and casting their ballots ahead of election day. In 2013, 24.3 percent of German voters cast their ballots early and by mail, and Cristina Tillmann, director of the Future of Democracy Program at the Bertelsmann Foundation, said that number could rise even further this time around.
“Mail-in voting is here to stay,” Tillmann told DW. “It’s become a full-fledged alternative to going to the polls in the real lives of voters, so it’s no longer an exception, even if it’s legally still defined as one. Parties and election workers need to reckon with a quarter or even 30 percent of voters casting their ballots early.”
Read more on dw.com.