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Election documents

1. Storage

Once the electoral board has completed its duties, the electoral officer packs in separate parcels

• the ballot papers, arranged and sorted into bundles of papers for each constituency candidate, of ballot papers on which only the second vote has been cast and of unmarked ballot papers (at European elections, arranged and sorted into bundles for each nomination and bundles of unmarked ballot papers),
• the polling cards collected,

in so far as these items are not appended to the election record, closes and seals the individual parcels, marks them with a note of their contents and hands them over to the municipal authority. Until the parcels are handed over to the municipal authority, the electoral officer must ensure that the documents are not accessible to unauthorized persons.

The municipal authority has to store the parcels until authorization is issued for the destruction of electoral documents. It must ensure that the parcels are not accessible to unauthorized persons. The local authority must submit the parcels to the constituency returning officer on demand (European election: district or town returning officer). Should only parts of a parcel be demanded, the local authority breaks open the parcel in the presence of two witnesses, removes the demanded part and reseals the parcel. A record of the process must be drawn up and signed by all participants. 

2. Destruction

The surrendered voter’s notifications have to be destroyed without delay. Voters’ registers, polling card registers, registers of invalid polling cards, registers of persons eligible to vote in special polling districts and official forms with supporting signatures for nominations must be destroyed after a period of six months has elapsed after the election unless the Federal Returning Officer orders otherwise in view of pending electoral scrutiny proceedings or unless such documents could be of relevance to the prosecuting authority in the investigation of an electoral offence. All other electoral documents may be destroyed sixty days before the election to the German Bundestag/the European Parliament for its next legislative term. The Land returning officer may consent to the earlier destruction of the documents unless they could be of relevance to pending electoral scrutiny proceedings or to the prosecuting authority in the investigation of an electoral offence.

Last update: 1 February 2016