Repeat voting in Berlin: in a “representative polling station”.
I voted today in a so-called representative polling station. For the purpose of later election statistics, I was asked to provide information about my gender and year of birth. This raised some basic questions for me. For example, could I have simply registered as a man? Funny it would be.
The repeat election for the Berlin House of Representatives and the District Assembly began for me a couple weeks ago when, to my surprise, I received both the requested absentee ballot documents and the election notification for a vote at the polling station. Berlin apparently wanted to make sure that I would be part of the process again this time.
Then this morning at the polling station, it was explained to me that I was voting in a representative constituency. This means that gender and age group are noted on the top right of the ballot papers in order to create the corresponding election statistics. Voters are handed ballot papers according to the information they have provided. The results for the election to the Berlin House of Representatives on September 26, 2021 can be found here (in German).
Classification for the statistics in the repeat election on February 12, 2023:
Age group by year of birth e.g. 1954-1963 so 60-69 years old, 1964-1973 so 50-59 years, 1974-1983 so 40-49 years etc.
Gender is still only surveyed in two categories, one of which contains several subcategories. Exactly: whereas in former times only a rough distinction was made between “man” and “woman”, today one category is called: “female”. The other category is “male, diverse or without indication in the birth register”.
The information on the ballots also gets recorded in a tally list after the votes have been cast at the polling station. For this purpose, election workers ask again for gender and age. I apparently look so undoubtedly like a woman that the election worker didn’t ask me about my gender at all, but automatically recorded my birth year information under “female.” “Would you also record me under the category ‘male’ if I now refer to myself as a man?”, I had already asked when I was handed over the ballot. “Of course,” was the answer.
What significance will electoral statistics have in the future if - as the self-determination law planned by the German federal government envisages - one's gender can be redefined once a year? Why is "female" a separate category, while "male" is thrown together with "diverse" and "not specified"? Not to mention the question: Why is it no longer "man" and "woman" but "male" and "female"? And what's the point of specifying gender at all, if it can be chosen at whim?
Perhaps these election statistics are basically dispensable. Apart from the general need for information, it mainly serves the political parties to identify their electorate. Would we be better off saving the tax money for this survey? Or do we once again question the possible consequences of the planned self-determination law?