Democracy In-action

Yesterday was phase one of elections here. On Sunday night we read an estimated 33% of the population voted in the local elections. The paper now states closer to 50%. This was for mayor and (as far as I could tell) two other local offices. Next month is the big national election.

I'll be happy to see all the street ads going away. It is hard enough to learn to drive here when signs are different and stop lights are in different places. It is even more difficult when there's ten political ads posted all around each intersection. I will, however, be disappointed to not see all the new creative ways of blacking out teeth or adding funny mustaches on candidate's portraits.

So yeah, 50%. I first wanted to write about how pathetic 33% was. But 50%? I hate to say it but that's probably better than the average local elections in the States. Who was the big winner yesterday? The party of "Köln kann's besser" (SPD) seemed to have more appeal than the CDU's "Köln Kann's." 55% - 33%. Adjectives, people. That's all it takes.

What was election day like here? I accompanied our two eligible voters to the polling location yesterday afternoon. Polls closed at 6pm. We went around 4:30. The polling center was in a grade school, staffed mostly by older retirees. After having your ID approved, you're given three paper ballots. One for each of the open positions. Apparently they experimented with computerized polls a few elections back but there weren't any at this location this time.

The ballots are as simple as possible. All candidates are listed in nice big print with a circle next to each. To vote for your candidate, you mark an 'X' in the circle. Do that once on each ballot and you're finished. Easy. Simple. No confusing butterfly ballots or hanging chads or anything like that. Once you're done, you place all three ballots inside the same box. We spent more time walking to and from the school than actual time voting. And we spent a whole five minutes watching the late news to see the results. We'll see what happens with next month's elections. I guess after last November in Chicago, anything will seem pretty underwhelming in comparison.