German voting free of manipulation attempts, authorities say

Germany’s voting process and the counting of ballots was free of any attempts at manipulation from foreign actors, according to security authorities, despite schemes by various foreign forces to meddle in the campaign.

Thanks to Germany’s paper-based voting process, there is no doubt about the integrity of this election, an Interior Ministry spokesman said on Monday.

Nevertheless, in the run-up to the Bundestag elections, “various attempts to exert foreign influence in the information space” were noted, he said.

Those attempts were primarily aimed at shaking confidence in the electoral process and influencing the voting behaviour of eligible voters, he said.

“Russia carried out several covert influence operations and campaigns in the information space to influence the election in its favour by clandestine means,” the spokesman said, although authorities believe those influence campaigns had limited reach.

Two days before the election, the Ministry of the Interior had drawn attention to two fake videos, presumably created by Russian propagandists, which purported to showed alleged manipulation of paper ballots to the detriment of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).