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Toni Vetrano must have known that his appeal would come to nothing.

Despite this, the 56-year-old Christian Democrat sent an armored letter to the CDU-led state interior ministry just seven weeks before the state elections in Baden-Württemberg.

Born in Sicily, who came to Germany with his family at the age of one, has been Lord Mayor of Kehl am Rhein, a half-hour S-Bahn ride from Strasbourg, since 2014.

After the experiences with the Alsatian local election in spring 2020, which he sees as a super-spreader event and in which even a newly elected mayor died of Covid-19, Vetrano is now concerned about the health of his election workers.

His demand: Please take the example of Thuringia as soon as possible and postpone the state elections planned for March 14th to September 26th, the day of the federal elections.

From a legal point of view, however, the rescheduling of the date is simply impossible, said state returning officer Cornelia Nesch WELT.

The constitution now stipulates that a new parliament must be elected by the end of the electoral term in early April.

The same applies to the state elections in Rhineland-Palatinate, also planned for March 14th.

And the Hessian local elections will also take place on the same day as planned.

In Thuringia, however, the election would have been brought forward in April.

The official election period will not end there until October 2024. A postponement was not a problem, at least from a legal point of view.

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Even in normal times, holding elections is an enormous feat.

During the corona pandemic, however, it turns into a real acid test for democracy and the separation of powers.

Whether and how elections can currently be carried out in such a way that they actually do justice to health protection, the right to vote and the formation of free will is a hotly controversial topic in the super election year 2021.

Take postal votes, for example, the proportion of which is likely to rise sharply: Are they more susceptible to manipulation?

The AfD insinuates this and sees “non-governmental parties and smaller parties at a disadvantage”.

Or the question of whether elections without an election campaign are actually objectionable from a legal point of view.

No, says constitutional lawyer Sophie Schönberger from Düsseldorf, "provided the conditions are the same for everyone".

But that is exactly what is not the case, argues the Left Party.

Your candidate Andreas Klamm has therefore just petitioned a digital portal for all candidates in Rhineland-Palatinate, which the Südwestrundfunk should set up.

He has sent out dozens of press releases, but is being ignored by the local media, according to Klamm.

In the absence of an on-site election campaign, he has fewer opportunities to present himself.

No “covering” allowed in polling stations

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And what about mouth and nose covering at the polling station, where there is actually a ban on masking?

The SPD in Baden-Württemberg is convinced that the mask requirement could make the state election legally contestable.

Because according to the law, members of electoral boards and electoral committees are not actually allowed to be covered in the polling station.

The Ministry of the Interior argues that corona protection is not a “cover”.

But this insurance is not enough for the SPD party and parliamentary group leader Andreas Stoch in Baden-Württemberg.

He had also demanded a change in the electoral law so that the country could have switched to postal voting in an emergency in hotspots.

This is how Bavaria did it in the second round of local elections at the end of March 2020.

In the neighboring state of Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony-Anhalt, where elections will take place on June 6, after a change in law, postal votes would be possible in an emergency.

But not so in Baden-Württemberg: After the opposition of the CDU, the initiative in the state parliament was thrown out.

The CDU also refused the wish of the community assembly to send postal voting documents as a precautionary measure with the election notification: "We want to receive the deliberate act of applying for postal voting documents," said parliamentary group spokesman Rainer Wehaus in December.

Because if these were “distributed to all households like unsolicited advertising brochures”, it could change the character of the choice.

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The negative attitude has not changed until today.

The CDU will advertise intensively for the highest possible postal voting, said parliamentary group leader Wolfgang Reinhart WELT.

But "even under pandemic conditions it is necessary to ensure a nationwide election of the urn."

For cities and municipalities, making the choice is now an immense challenge.

In Baden-Württemberg alone, 80,000 election workers are needed - and they want to be found first.

Mayor Vetrano in Kehl cannot imagine that.

He considers the narrow corridors in schools and official buildings, where polling stations are supposed to open, to be potential infection traps.

There, however, people would have to stand in line and election workers would have to control access.

"At a time when we send our colleagues to work from home, in some areas work in shifts to minimize contacts and thus try to ensure that our critical infrastructure remains functional, I cannot imagine the employees on the 14th. March to such a risk of infection, ”wrote Vetrano to the Interior Ministry.

There one sees the situation calmly.

Local councilors or party members could be used as election workers.

In addition, polling stations could also be set up elsewhere, such as in large sports halls, said a spokesman.

Some administrations simply opened significantly more polling stations than usual to avoid traffic jams and queues.

That leaves the problem of voter turnout - and the question of whether significantly more citizens will actually use the postal voting option, which could change the character of the elections.

Election researcher Thorsten Faas from the Free University of Berlin points out that when voting at home it is actually not possible to ensure to the same extent how freely and secretly a voting decision has been made.

So far, however, there has been no "broadly" doubt about the acceptance of postal voting, which is also permitted by the Constitutional Court.

The AfD drives postal voting

Nevertheless, an impact on the election result cannot be ruled out.

"Of course, for some parties we see a higher proportion of postal voters than those who vote in attendance and vice versa," said Faas tagesschau.de.

"The mistrust in postal votes is higher in some places than in others, so AfD voters in particular are less likely to vote by letter."

That is obviously what drives the AfD.

The AfD member of the Bundestag Peter Boehringer recently warned on YouTube that voting by post in state and federal elections this year could gain more space.

“The word has got around why postal votes can produce different results than face-to-face elections,” said the chairman of the budget committee.

"It puts the non-government parties and the small parties at a disadvantage."

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Boehringer probably had little intention of manipulating the voting form in such a way that a grandson of his fiddly grandmother takes the pen to a convenient place.

Because such manipulation - which, by the way, is a criminal offense - would possibly even benefit the AfD, which has so far performed poorly among the over 70-year-olds.

What is meant is something else: the handling of completed ballot papers and the counting.

Many AfD groups have already stoked suspicion of this in earlier elections by calling on party supporters to “observe the election”.

The “One Percent” network, classified as a “suspected case” by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, has already questioned the integrity of electoral counts through several such campaigns.

The AfD also met with considerable support, as ex-President Donald Trump described the US presidential election as "stolen" and condemned the postal vote in particular as prone to manipulation.

In Saxony-Anhalt, where there will be elections in June and the black-red-green coalition thinks very strongly in favor of postal voting, the AfD member of the state parliament Robert Farle even used these plans as an opportunity for conspiracy-ideological claims: "This whole pandemic is a hoax", said Farle in the state parliament.

And there are only new regulations on postal voting “to carry out the greatest electoral fraud in this country”.

The Thuringian AfD country chief Björn Höcke described the postal vote as "a possibility of democracy processing".

According to Höcke, it opens the door to “influence and manipulation”.

It is quite conceivable that the AfD could even benefit from postal voting - namely if the ordering of postal voting documents is actually too much trouble for many citizens and they do not vote at all in the end.

Because many AfD voters do not consider the corona virus threatening and should therefore go to the polling stations unmoved.

As a result, that would mean a higher proportion of AfD votes.

If it came to that, allegations of manipulation on the part of the AfD would probably not be expected.