Berlin – An election goes in the bin? Franziska Giffey (44, SPD) wanted to spare herself these embarrassing comments and pictures. Rather she chose a bit later.
In their polling station, an auditorium in a Protestant school in the Friedrichshain district, four booths and a garbage can (!) are set up as a ballot box. A handwritten note was stuck on it.
Already in the 2021 election there was a sealed garbage can as a ballot box.
Giffey voting in 2021
When the Governing Mayor found out about this in advance, she reacted angrily: “I don’t want such pictures from Berlin to go around the world!”
The barrel of contention
Here the unpopular rubbish bin is exchanged for a neutral bin
A call to the responsible city council and the exchange rolls on. District driver Marco Rietz gets a neutral gray bin from the district administration and exchanges it. With a delay of several minutes, Giffey can finally choose.
App users come here for the distribution of votes.
Giffey after voting
Giffey afterwards: “It will be fine. We would like to remain the leading force in this city.”
► It turns out that the district of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg mostly uses garbage cans. This is also shown by tweets from other polling stations in the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district.
App users can access the coalition calculator here.
Election so far without any special incidents
Dead pants in the polling station at Turmstraße 75 in the Berlin College – no queues. The voting procedure took less than five minutes.
Everything also went smoothly in the Tiergarten town hall on Mathilde-Jacob-Platz. The same applies to the Tiergarten Gymnasium at Altonaer Strasse 26. There were long queues for breakdown selection.
Election worker Marek Much (45) was also present at the last election. He says: “The voter turnout is much lower. Last time there was already a long queue at 8 a.m., this time there was hardly anything going on until 10 a.m..”
Colorful voting in Berlin
In contrast to 2021, Sunday was only chosen in the sports hall and in the foyer of the school, but two years ago in many rooms. A hand-painted sign showed where to go to the polling stations.
In order to guarantee trouble-free redialing, the police are on duty with 1,700 officers. They protect the more than 2,200 polling stations. “The aim is to ensure that the elections run smoothly,” said a police spokeswoman. A “special organizational structure” was set up for the Sunday election to be able to cope with the additional deployment of personnel.
For example, no larger rallies would be permitted in front of polling stations because this would impede access. It is also important to prevent disruptive actions. The situation remained calm until midday.
For the election to the House of Representatives, around 2.4 million Berliners are called upon to re-elect their state parliament. The elections for the twelve district assemblies will also take place again: 2.7 million eligible voters can cast their votes.