Safeguards against electoral fraud vs. accessibility and citizens’ convenience – Need for changes in the German electoral system

Abstract

Democratic elections are the basis of democracy. Allegations of electoral fraud lead to protests and violent clashes all over the world. In order to avoid such scenes, the electoral system has to be reliable and transparent. At the same time, voter turnout must be kept high in order to maintain the will of the people in a representative way. However, the required accessibility and citizens’ convenience often seems to be in conflict with system security. Higher safeguards often comes with more formalisation and therefore less flexibility for the individual. This article shows how the German electoral system can be improved, while combining safety standards with citizens’ convenience. For this purpose, significant weaknesses of voting in polling stations, postal vote, the count of votes and digitalization, especially e-voting are identified. To remedy these weaknesses, solutions from various European democracies are presented as reform approaches for the German electoral system.