Parliamentary elections in Germany this month are set to usher in a new post-Angela Merkel era. But there’s another way they’re affecting politics: early voting. Germans have enjoyed postal voting for decades, but with no end to the pandemic in sight, officials expect as many as 60 percent of voters may choose to cast their ballots by mail this year. The far-right AfD party is using that development to take a page from Donald Trump’s playbook with unfounded claims about voting reliability. Former fellow and journalist Emily Schultheis, currently based in Berlin and Vienna, joins ICWA’s Glenn Kates to explain what’s at stake.
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From the Field is a production of the Institute of Current World Affairs.
Emily Schultheis
Journalist, former ICWA fellow (Germany, 2019-2021)
Glenn Kates
From the Field host and producer
Top photo: Willy Brandt House in Berlin, September 2021 (JoachimKohler-HB, Wikimedia Commons)
