Voting slip in the Bundestag election 2025: This is what it looks like

In the Bundestag election on February 23, the voters coordinate with the ballot paper – either on election day itself in the voting booth or beforehand by postal voting.

Important to know: You should fill out the ballot “according to the regulations”, for example, not to write anything on the piece of paper or to spread parts. Anyone who notes a note on the paper or scribbled around there makes the ballot invalid.

In our every day you will find current news about the early new elections.

All voters each have to award one first vote and a second vote. With the first voices that are in the left column of the ballot paper in black, you choose the direct candidates in the respective constituency. With the second vote – in the right column and in blue script – you vote for a party.

From the number of two votes, the percentage that a party receives in the Bundestag results. Politicians are voted directly to parliament by first votes: The candidates who get most votes in their constituency can move into the Bundestag in Berlin by direct mandate.

If you are not yet sure who to choose, the election machine for the 2025 Bundestag election can serve as a decision -making aid.

Incidentally, you don’t have to give both votes on the ballot paper – it is enough to do a cross at a party or to leave one of the two columns to a direct candidate.

But please no more than one cross per column: If you tick two or even more direct candidates, in the end you have not chosen any of it – the voice is invalid. Voting more than two parties is not possible either.

However, it may well be that the ballot is valid in parts: the column that has got more than a cross does not count. But the other with just one cross.

In detail, it looks like this: Anyone who has only checked more than one direct candidate, whose voice still counts for the party.

Once you have chosen several parties, but have a single first vote, the parties don’t get a voice from this voter – but the cross for the first candidate is counted.

Basically, you can remember that the will to voters must be clearly recognizable. So it is best to paint a cross in the field with the circle – so that it can be clearly seen.

And how is the order of candidates and parties defined on the ballot? This results from the Federal Election Act.

All federal states have their own sorting: The party, whose state list has won the most votes in the previous Bundestag election, follows the other.

Parties that are new are in alphabetical order. The direct candidates in the left column always stand next to their parties. Their order therefore results from that of the parties.

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