Germany's Two Votes on One Ballot
German voters mark two choices, a local candidate and a party list. Anjali and a Berlin returning officer explain what each vote does, how seats are allocated, and why the Bundestag changes size.
A Million Polling Stations in Six Weeks
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Show notes
A Million Polling Stations in Six Weeks
Anjali starts at home. India's general election is the largest administrative exercise on earth, and she explains the phased schedule, the machines and the people, with a former district election officer.
- Why the vote is held in phases and how the sequence is decided
- The electronic voting machine: first-level checks, randomisation and mock polls
- The rule that no voter should be more than 2 km from a station, and what it demands
- A polling party that walked two days to reach one registered voter
- Counting day: the strong room, the seals, and the round-by-round tally
Next episode: Germany's two votes on one ballot, and what each is for.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to Ballot Boxes of the World. I am Anjali Raghunathan, and for nine years I ran polling stations and counting centres in Tamil Nadu, so we are going to start this series at home. India's general election involves about a million polling stations, roughly 15 million staff, and a schedule that runs in phases over six weeks. Today we look at why it is phased, how the voting machines are checked and randomised before anyone touches them, and the rule that no voter should be more than 2 kilometres from a polling station, which once sent a polling party on a two day walk for a single voter. I am joined by a former district election officer. We will not talk about who won. We will talk about how it ran. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.
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