In Upper Palatinate, thousands of postal voters have to be contacted because of a glitch because they may have received incorrect ballot papers. As the city of Weiden announced on Wednesday, isolated pieces of paper from the neighboring Tirschenreuth district were issued in the Weiden district. Ten voters have registered so far.
The research indicated that in a box of 1,000 ballots, there was an incorrectly packaged bundle of 50 slips. During the random check of a total of almost 467,000 pieces of paper on 15 pallets, there was no realistic possibility of noticing this error, said a city spokeswoman.
Affected are papers for the district elections, which will take place on October 8th parallel to the state elections. The electoral offices should now write to all postal voters from both constituencies who may be affected; in the Weiden constituency alone there are around 9,800 people.
Citizens who have not yet returned their voting documents but have already sealed the voting letters can request replacement documents from the authorities. If the ballot letters have already been returned to the town halls, the matter becomes more complicated. “Voting letters that have already been received by the election office may no longer be returned,” explained the city spokeswoman. In this case, those affected would have to have their voting card declared invalid. They would then receive new postal voting documents.