“My team advised me against it,” sighs Laura Dornheim. But by then it was too late to keep your fingers off the keyboard. Munich’s IT officer wanted to present a new assistant for the municipal election office, who can now be reached around the clock for questions about state and district elections. The demonstration effect feared by Dornheim’s team came about – things went wrong at first. At first the screens behind the speaker remained black, and when the new employee appeared and introduced himself (“Servus, I’m Muckl! Can I help?”), he didn’t give the information he had hoped for when Dornheim asked: “I’ve got that I don’t have an answer. I’m still learning.”
At the next attempt it worked as desired, “Muckl” passed his public test. The chatbot – a computer program that enables a dialogue between humans and technology – has been in use since April, but “we first let it work undercover because it’s still learning,” explained Dornheim on Tuesday at a press conference in the district administration department (KVR ). There she informed with KVR boss Hanna Sammüller-Gradl about the status of preparations for the state parliament and district elections on October 8th. The two departments “work very closely together, including when it comes to elections,” said Sammüller-Gradl.
Digitization is also progressing when it comes to evaluating the voting results: On October 8, they will be recorded by computer in more than 1,000 so-called voting cases at the polling stations, added up and transmitted to the election office via secure lines. However, elections will continue to be carried out analogously, with pen on paper.
In order to unfold the ballot paper, Sammüller-Gradl and Dornheim demonstrated their cooperation – “that’s wallpaper like that,” groaned the district administration officer at the sight of the paper reaching far beyond arm’s length. The state and district lists are poster-sized and contain all the candidates from the 15 or 14 approved parties. The ballot papers for the direct candidates of the individual constituencies are somewhat narrower.
There are nine such constituencies in the state capital, and 912,809 Munich residents are eligible to vote for the 180 seats in the state parliament. They can vote in 506 rooms and then hand in the ballots in 4104 ballot boxes, as Sammüller-Gradl listed. However, she expects that the majority will tick the box at home. The proportion of postal voters was already very high in 2018 at 43.1 percent, she said: “We assume that the number will continue to rise,” up to 55 or even 60 percent.
KVR boss Hanna Sammüller-Gradl is happy about the many voluntary election workers.
(Photo: Catherine Hess)
In order to count the votes of the postal voters, the KVR has rented new premises – in the Motorworld, in the Zenith and in the Kesselhaus. So far, the event center MOC on the exhibition grounds had been sufficient for this. This year, half of the 12,000 election workers are assigned to do so. What Sammüller-Gradl is particularly pleased about is that, in addition to municipal employees, so many citizens have volunteered. They make up almost two-thirds of the election workers, “a nice sign that they want to do something for democracy,” says the head of the KVR.
She bases her forecast for the increase in postal voters on the fact that 70,000 people have already applied for the relevant documents – although the election notifications have only been sent out since last week. Anyone who has not received one by September 17 should contact the KVR, said Sammüller-Gradl.
You can also ask “Muckl” where to go, you can find him on the city’s homepage (www.muenchen.de); if you click on “Elections and voting”., he appears. He easily answers frequently asked questions, but “he doesn’t make a recommendation,” says IT officer Dornheim: “He’s correctly neutral.” But her new employee is not completely limited to bureaucracy either, she assures: “You can also ask him whether he is related to Pumuckl.”