(Because that's what it's saying--you register to vote when you get your official ID. If you don't get an official ID, you don't register to vote.)

They are also federal elections. They're separate from state and local elections. In the US we merge them. And that's why they can hand-count them.

In fact, we don't have federal elections in the US, which is something my kid was taught in public schools a couple of years ago--he's in 8th grade now. All elections are state or local. These are pretty much unrelated electoral systems, which is why ballots in the US are messy and cannot be hand-counted with any accuracy or ease. A few elections back there were some 80 votes to be cast on the single ballot I had, from president to local county officials, county and city issues. If I went to polling stations in any direction I couldn't vote because I'd have crossed at least one juridisctional line--a county commissioner boundary, a state representative boundary, something. During early voting they have it set up so I could go everywhere and see "my" ballot. They could do that at any time; they just don't.

We could remake jurisdictions from the ground up to serve the federal level and really centralize things around the federal government. That would be a rather large change for the US. It's been happening slowly, but then again increasing the power of the presidency has also been happening--the "imperial presidency" that everybody hated back in the '70s was a weakling compared to the "weak" presidency many decried under Obama when a lot of people wanted all sorts of things done by executive order, and others feared that he could and would do them.

We also don't have a parliamentary system. Both systems have merits. Just looking at what's good with one and bad with the other while not comparing strengths and weaknesses of both prejudges the outcome.


As for the incredible integrity of paper ballots, remember the old slogan: Vote early, vote often, and vote in pencil so we can correct your mistakes. Electoral corruption's been around far longer than we've had voting machines.

Russia has paper ballots, by the way.

they have a voter ID law [..] If you don't get an official ID, you don't register to vote.

Everyone is required to own an official ID (passport or ID card/Personalausweis) in Germany. You are also required to notify the government about your place of residence and keep the government updated when you move to another place. So every citizen (who hasn't lost their voting rights and is 18+ years of age) can vote simply by taking the notification letter and going to the polling place, which often can be reached within a few minutes walking distance, because everyone has an ID card anyway. It's not a technique to reduce turnout.

Vote early, vote often, and vote in pencil so we can correct your mistakes

From 8am to 6pm, every citizen is allowed to monitor our elections. Then everyone is allowed to monitor the counting process. Then you can check the final results to see if the precinct's results were submitted correctly. It's pretty much tamper-proof, or tampering would at least be easy to detect. (If nobody cares, then of course they can go and change votes when nobody is looking. But we're allowed to look, and usually there are members of at least both major parties at every polling place.)

That obviates the need for state laws, or confusion about what ID will suffice.

When we turn 16 (at the latest), we must visit our local citizen center and request either a passport or an ID card (Personalausweis). Everyone is required to have one, though it's not required to carry it around wherever you go. When we move to a new place, we go to the new citizen centre and let them update our records and the ID card and/or passport.

So the government always knows where everyone lives. Based on that info, they maintain the poll books and send out the notifications for elections. I've never had to actually show an ID at the polling place, I just give them my notification letter and they mark my name in the printed poll book. Though they can ask for an ID of course. They apparently accept expired ID cards and passports, maybe driver licences as well.

So "forgetting/failing to register" or "not having an ID" is simply not an issue that comes up in German elections. Everyone who feels like voting can vote, and all the politicians urge everyone to go and cast their vote. We had ~75% turnout today.

Get an ID at a young age, and then we'll ahve it for life. No problems with voting or anything requiring ID.

I thought "voter ID law" = voters must present an ID at the polling place, but poor people tend not to have a driver's license or passport, so they are less likely to vote. I didn't know you call the system we use in Germany "voter ID law". Thanks.

In the U S, we have states enacting various "voter ID" laws, requiring photographs. That's because the country has no requirement for any ID, and we have many people here who have no official ID. No driver's license or anything. Most of us have Social Security cards, but that's not ID proof, since it doesn't have a photo, and I can give my SS card to anyone, who could then use it.

So I was thinking if everyone got some official ID, the same ID, at a young age, then we're set for life, insofar as proving who we are. We just have to update it.

It's harder to get one when you're older, since birth certificates have been lost, and it takes time & money to get a certified copy of a birth cert. Then you have to get some sort of approved ID.

Maybe it wouldn't work out well. But it was just a thought.

My wife, a German citizen, went to vote one time when our two daughters were 3 and 5. This was before I changed my residence to Germany full time. The polling place in our town, near Düsseldorf, refused to let her vote. She asked why, and they told her it was because she lived in Munich.

My wife has NEVER lived in Munich. EVER. She has never even lived in Bavaria or anywhere else in southern Germany. She told them so. They told her their computer said she lived in Munich, so she lived in Munich. She then told them to look for her two daughters, aged 3 and 5. Sure enough, they were listed at the correct address near Düsseldorf. She then demanded that they call the police and the press to arrest her for illegal child abandonment, or let her vote. They saw she was serious (she was), and allowed her to vote. The next day, they even transferred her residence to the correct address, but they would not cancel her "previous" residence in Munich, although it was a fiction of their computer.

As was noted in post #5: "Everyone is required to own an official ID (passport or ID card/Personalausweis) in Germany. You are also required to notify the government about your place of residence and keep the government updated when you move to another place." This is quite correct. It is called "polizeiliche Anmeldung." I couldn't believe it when I first heard of it, and thought someone was telling me about East Germany, but it's true. The government has their eye on you from birth to death here. When I first moved to Germany and had to pay German taxes, my American accountant made me sign a waiver allowing them to release information requested by the Germans. They people in Dallas said the Germans' requests were so intrusive as to be illegal in the USA for anyone not suspected of being a Colombian drug lord or a Mafia don, and even then only with a court order. In Germany, the government wants to know not only what brand of toothpaste you use, but how much you use per brushing. Heil Honecker. There is always an upside and a downside to every issue, it would appear.

All your financial data is automatically sent to the ministry of finance and they do your tax-return. Unless you're in a weird situation with changing jobs a lot and stuff like that, there is basically no need to file a tax-return yourself.

Since 1945, they are not allowed to do what they want to do to me any more. I have had the same job since 1975. Not weird to me, maybe weird to you, and obviously VERY weird to them. All of my income, as well as my employer is in the USA, and much of it is source-taxed in the USA. According to the DBA (Double Taxation Treaty), this cannot be taxed again in Germany. Except that they DO want to tax it again. After the USA has taken 39.6% of the gross, the Germans now want another 50% of the gross. This leaves me with 10%. In the Finanzamt, they keep sending my file from Beamter to Beamter because it is not easy for them. It requires some thinking and decision making, things Beamten usually do not do. But intrusive? Oh, yeah, THAT they can do. Reichsbehörden are good at that.

A neighbor of ours is a judge on the Finanzgericht zu Düsseldorf, wrote his doctorate on double taxation and teaches tax law at the Uni Bonn. He says what they are trying to do to me is illegal, but a judge can only act on a case before him. He cannot intercede in activities by the Finanzamt, only judge them when brought before him. This is not 1938, and I do not appreciate these people acting like it is.

I also have a Roth IRA, which I converted and paid the taxes on before moving here. Under US law, I have paid my taxes, and it is the only retirement money I have. But the Roth IRA is not mentioned in the DBA, and the Germans want of half of that, too. Enteignung again. I get that there might be situations they are not familiar with. But just taking and demanding without doing the required work and research is not the right way to go about this. I will not be enteignet and be reduced to selling apples at the Hauptbahnhof just because some Finanzbeamter is lazy and nostalgic for what his job was 80 years ago.