In a wide-ranging interview with the Austrian alternative media AUF1, the leader of Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, Alice Weidel, has raised the spectre of electoral fraud in the recent regional elections in Saxony-Anhalt and called for a full recount. The AfD won those elections with nearly 44% of the vote but failed to obtain the absolute majority in the regional parliament that would have ensured that the AfD’s prime minister candidate, Ulrich Siegmund, could form a government. As reported on the Daily Sceptic, a glaring discrepancy between the results of in-person voting and postal voting has led some German observers to call the overall result into question.
Now the AfD’s own chief has joined them. “I’m really not prone to conspiracy theories,” Weidel told AUF1’s Editor-in-Chief Stefan Magnet:
But the discrepancy between the in-person vote and the postal vote – somebody has to explain that to me. It’s so statistically glaring that I can’t explain it. Some districts are now being recounted. But I honestly have to say: Uli Siegmund missed the absolute majority by such a narrow margin, so this is something that needs to be looked at very carefully. I would call for having all districts recounted, because it’s just too close.
Noting that the AfD missed having an outright majority by just one seat, Magnet asked:
Are you saying that if irregularities should turn up in the vote, then it could in fact be the case that the vote in Saxony-Anhalt was stolen to, in effect, deprive the AfD of this single vote?
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Weidel responded,
Maybe that’s what you’ve heard. I’m simply stating what I observe: … the result of the postal vote differs substantially from that of the vote at the polling stations.
Alluding to individual districts in which Siegmund reportedly received 60% of the in-person vote but merely 25% of the postal vote, Weidel concluded, “This is a substantial statistical discrepancy that I cannot explain.” She also alluded to the case of a 95 year-old dementia-sufferer for whom a nursing home in Dessau is reported to have cast a vote. The case of the nursing home resident was already widely reported in the German media in the run-up to election day.
Asked by Magnet whether an AfD government in Germany would abolish postal voting, Weidel replied “yes”.
Alice Weidel’s full interview with Stefan Magnet is available on YouTube here. Weidel begins discussing the suspicions of voter fraud around the 7.30 mark. Users can choose automatic translation from YouTube. The above translations are by the author.
John Rosenthal is a journalist and political analyst who writes on European politics and transatlantic issues. You can subscribe to his Transatlantic Intelligencer Substack, where this article first appeared, here.
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to the Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
There was a reason why voting in person, only one person at a time in a cubicle in secret became standard.
It was to prevent an individual being coerced/direct to vote a particular way and so that the number of ballot papers filled out corresponded to the number of individuals eligible to vote who went to the voting stations
Postal voting is an open invitation for fraud. Head of household instructing the whole family how to vote, someone other than the person whose ballot paper it is filling it out.
I’m not saying something new.
The only postal votes allowed should be service personnel stationed away from their constituency, other government employees posted overseas.
Too ill or immobile to attend in person, too bad.
Voter fraud is going to get worse and worse as the Country fills up with people from places where the voting system is chronically fraudulent, and said people vote on sectarian, or racial basis. Also of course children will soon be able to vote – and which sector of the population have most children per household?