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If you want to vote by mail please do so as soon as you can and consider dropping it off at the counter where they will postmark it right away.
Also if you live in a state where you’re allowed to photograph your ballot consider doing so to have proof you voted a certain way.
Note that as a counterpoint the federal register website claims they are just clarifying language to improve public understanding: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/08/12/2025-15266/postmarks-and-postal-possession
I didn’t check that document very closely yet.
Interesting that this is even relevant in the US.
Here in Germany the only relevant metric is whether a document has arrived at the recipient before any given deadline, from ballots to legal documents. It is considered your responsibility to ensure sending anything sufficiently early.
Sure but you gotta remember, your system is run by Germans, we just have fucking Americans in charge of everything over here!
It’s possible that American trains are more on-time to than German trains these days…
“American” “trains”? I understand those words separately, but they don’t make sense together
Nah, order and organization is a German thing, not a Nazi thing.
The center right government in Germany spent the last decade or so underfunding public institutions, such as Deutsche Bahn, and now train travel in Germany sucks ass.
Ah, I thought you were making a The US is Run by Nazis joke. Which, y’know, it basically is these days.
Wow. That’s subject to abuse though unless there is a maintained predictable transit time. Maintaining a timestamp for the handoff is a critical tracking metric.
How would it be subject to abuse¹? Deliveries are somewhat predictable, by law 95% of letters must arrive within 3 days, 99% within 4 days. Mail-in ballots “should” be delivered within 2 days.
If it must arrive regardless of circumstances you can generally just send it via fax (except for mail-in ballots of course).
Though this has also lead to some issues. Because the 2025 election was a snap election there was significantly less time for mail-in ballots to be sent. This caused issues for many expats living outside Germany and as a result, at least a couple thousand votes from 200,000 registered expats were probably discarded.
Edit: ¹ any more than a system relying on the date on the postage stamp?
are you really struggling to understand how it could be subject to abuse lol maybe the person in charge of the post office lives in an area they know would vote a certain way so they give everyone a day off and the mail arrives too late to be counted
I still don’t see how stamping immediately could reduce the risk of abuse.
Anyone intent on doing so in a position of power can still do so. Maybe they have a stamp for a future date, maybe they “lose” certain mail, maybe they do not empty any of those election mail boxes the week before an election.
you specifically said you dont see how it would be subject to abuse, not that [different thing than what i was talking about] is less risk prone
I mean, everything is subject to abuse. The relevant factor is the likelihood and difficulty of such abuse, isn’t it? And I don’t really see how using the stamped date as an authority reduces either or how not doing so increases either. The way you’d commit abuse changes, sure, but doesn’t make abuse any easier/harder in my opinion, just different.
again, youre just talking about something entirely different. you said you dont see how a certain system was subject to abuse and i made up a possible way. all this talk about some system being more or less subject to abuse than another has nothing to do with the fact you said you couldnt see how a certain system was subject to abuse. i am not making a claim about any system being better than another so i have no idea why youre bringing that up
Fair enough, looks like we communicated past each other to some extent. I took your first comment as arguing this system was more subject to abuse.
I edited my comment to better reflect my original intent.
How is that different from your current system, though? Couldn’t the same postal worker just delay the stamping by one day, or stamp tomorrows date onto today’s letters?
The advantage of our system is, that we know the results in the night of the election. How would that work if letters arriving a week later would still count? On the other hand, we don’t have such a huge problem with voter suppression as the US: No gerrymandering, no need to register to vote, polling stations are accessible at reasonable times without long queues etc.
Please don’t imagined this couldn’t happen. Germany is not without active political threats. When a system can be abused it’s only a meter of time before it is.
The difference is that in a system where the standard is set to postmarked upon arrival it requires an active deviation from protocol that is more discoverable and potentially an illegal offense. It’s not bullet proof, but more difficult to manipulate intentionally or unintentionally on a large scale.
Intentionally delaying a mailing is already a crime in itself. And if you already have the power to shut down a mailing hub for a day or two without abyone noticing, I don’t see how it would be more difficult to change the date in the stamping machine.
I have no doubt that, when the Nazis come to power here as well, they will use all measures to suppress free voting. We of all people know how that works. But in that case, using the stamping date for mail-in voting won’t stop them anyway, as that’s a simple law, that can simply be changed by the people in power. Case in point: This very article about changing the postmark application rules. It seems, they didn’t even have to change a law for that, just some USPS internal guidelines.
how is what different than whos current system? i merely just gave a quick idea for how this one could be open to abuse and am making zero claims for any sort of postal system being better/worse than any other
The US system, using the date of the stamp instead of the arrival date. Neither system is safe from abuse. It’s just different.
Mail-in voting is inherently more error prone than voting in person. That’s why it’s important to make in person voting as accessible as possible. Voting on a Sunday, having plentiful accessible polling stations without significant waiting time surely helps, and is a reason why the share of voting by mail is traditionally way lower here in Germany than in the US. I never had to wait for more than 2 minutes at a polling station here in Germany.
Have a nice new year’s eve and guten Rutsch, as we say here.
If a black* person hands in a letter to guarantee that it’s received on time, and the worker is racist and believes it a tax form, they could just leave it for a few days/weeks before processing to guarantee that it’s late.
*Replace with any marginalised group or person. It could even include you.
In Germany, you usually don’t hand in letters, nor does the postman collect letters at your home. You throw them into a post box on the main street, which is emptied once or twice a day. So by the time the postal worker collects the mail they don’t have any means to know who posted which letter.
For really important mail you also have the option to use “Einschreiben” (registered mail) where the recipient has to sign that they received the letter.