The constituency of Rheingau-Taunus / Limburg has around 230,000 eligible voters, and of these, more than 150,000 will probably not go to the polling station, but instead cast their vote for the Bundestag election on Sunday, September 26th, by postal vote.

Some have already given them up.

The cities and municipalities in constituency 178 planned with this high proportion of postal voters, announced the district election officer Barbara Pendelin in Bad Schwalbach.

In some towns in the constituency, however, incorrectly printed ballot papers were sent out.

The district administration of the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis announced this on Wednesday.

These ballot papers are only printed with the left column for the first vote.

The right column for the second votes is missing.

Ballot papers were also sent out that were not printed at all.

All postal voters who have not yet returned their voting papers are asked to check their ballot papers.

If you have received an incorrect copy, you can contact your responsible electoral office to request new documents.

The contact details of the respective electoral office are on the voting slip.

Postal voting is no more susceptible to manipulation

All threads of the federal election in the constituency come together in the district building of the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis. It is not yet clear whether there will be an election party there, as in previous years. If, according to the election officer, an outdoor event will probably be organized on the parking deck due to the corona pandemic, at which the current corona rules would have to be applied.

Pendelin does not share fears that postal voting could be susceptible to manipulation.

“The postal vote is safe,” she made clear, because the municipalities would empty their mailboxes several times a day, and the ballot papers were also “well kept”.

Due to the high percentage of postal votes, some smaller polling stations may not be allowed to count themselves.

As soon as less than 50 voters have cast their vote there, the count must be combined with another constituency in order to protect voting secrecy.

Election observers are allowed

According to Pendelin, several small parties want to send election observers. The election supervisor has no problems with this, especially since it is the right of citizens to observe the public counting of votes. Nevertheless, the election observers would have to adhere to the Corona rules and other rules. "The electoral board has house rights," Pendelin clarified. For example, no photos should be taken and no attempt should be made to influence voters.

There are nine representative constituencies in constituency 178. The electoral districts are used to create reliable electoral statistics on data such as voter turnout and voting for the whole of Germany. According to Pendelin, there are a total of 96 postal voting districts and 237 ballot boxes in the constituency. The results of the election can be queried online using the Vote Manager. The 17 municipalities of the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis and the ten affiliated municipalities of the Limburg-Weilburg district transmit the counted results using the Hessian election web, and from there they are forwarded to the Vote Manager. Pendelin expects the results in the polling stations to be counted quite quickly, but the final result may be delayed due to the large number of postal votes.