So, there's a national election in Germany on September 26th...
1.
National photo-ID is mandatory in Germany. You get one when you turn 18. The card itself is good for 10 years or so, after which you must go to the appropriate city-department and get a new card made. (Due to your photo becoming outdated and due to newer cards having better security-features against falsification.) The new card costs about 30 Euros.
2.
When you move to a new appartment, you must BY LAW notify the appropriate city-department of your new address. They give you a form that your new landlord must fill out and send back to them, to prove that you are indeed living there. Once you have proven your residence, the city removes you from your old voter-roll and puts you on your new precinct's voter-roll.
To repeat: YOU GET AUTOMATICALLY REGISTERED AS A VOTER WHEN YOU MOVE THERE.
3.
This week, 3 weeks before election-day, I got my official election-notification sent to me via mail, issued by the "civics department" of my city.
* It has my name and address on it.
* I am voter No.877 in my precinct, which means there are about 2000 voters in the precinct.
* There is only one polling-station. It's right here in the precinct, about 15 minutes by foot away. It's open from 8 am to 6 pm.
* Only ONE POLLING-STATION per precinct, but the city knows months in advance PRECISELY how many eligible voters they can expect in this polling-station on election-day, so they know how many booths to set up so everybody is finished voting by 6 pm. The longest queue I have ever been in was 10 people long and I had to wait for 20 minutes to vote.
If you want to vote by mail, the backside of the election-notification is a form you have to fill out and send back to get the ballots. (This way you cannot use it twice to vote by mail and in-person.)
4.
Voting.
You go to the polling-station.
You show your photo-ID and the election-notification and they compare whether face, name and address match up.
You get your ID back, they keep the election-notification, you get the ballots and they mark you in the voter-roll as having voted.
That ballots are paper and you mark your vote with a coolie-head pen that's hanging from a small chain in the booth.
You put your ballots in the appropriate urns, say goodbye to the election-workers and that's it.
You may stay around to personally monitor the election, so long as you do not interfere with anyone and stay out of their way.
You may record the election on camera, even the vote-count, so long as you do not zoom in to individual ballots.
5.
Counting the votes.
Just as the city knows months in advance the maximum number of voters that could possibly show up at a given polling-station, they know months in advance PRECISELY how many election-workers and how many ballot-scanners they will need.
The polls close at 6 pm and by 7 pm about 90% of the precincts are finished counting.
47 parties are competing in the election, but only the 6 major parties have a realistic chance of entering parliament, and out of those only 2 have a realistic chance of winning the election. (Conservatives and Social-Democrats)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_German_federal_election#Parties_and_candidates
Some of the minor parties that never make it into parliament are:
* There is a satire-party that has no political program and purely exists for the purpose of publicity-stunts and sarcastic quips.
* There is a vegan party.
* There is a LGBT-party.
* There are two parties vowing to fight for the rights of the retired.
* There are 3 full-on communist parties.
* Even though there's a major far-right party similar to the US-Republicans and already thiiiiis close to going full fascist (polling at about 10-20%), there 4 other minor neonazi parties competing against them.
* Even though there's a major environmentalist party (polling at about 10-20%), there 7 other minor environmentalist parties competing against them.
* There are about 10 minor parties dedicated to progressivism, family, human rights, civil-rights, anti-war and stuff like that... even though there already are 3 major parties specifically dedicated to these topics.
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