Fact check: Are Germany's postal votes being manipulated?

Stakes are high in Germany's three September state elections. In Saxony-Anhalt, where voters go to the ballot boxes on Sunday, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) could make history in by winning an outright majority.

The AfD's Saxony-Anhalt branch, which has been classified by the domestic intelligence agency as a "confirmed right-wing extremist organization", could become Germany's first far-right state government since World War II.

Mail-in voting, or "Briefwahl," has become an increasingly common feature of German elections. But the rise in mail-in ballots has been followed by a renewed wave of speculation and claims questioning the security and integrity of postal vote.

DW Fact check examined a sample of claims circulating online and assessed what the available evidence shows.

Does postal voting manipulate election results?

Claim: Cases of fraud involving postal ballots prove that postal voting is unreliable.

This claim recurrently appeared in posts about postal voting that DW Fact check reviewed on social media platforms including TikTok, X and Facebook.

Some posts point to individual cases of electoral fraud involving postal ballots and present them as evidence that the system as a whole is flawed. One verified account on X using the AfD logo, for example, cited two cases — a mail-in vote being cast on behalf of an elderly woman with dementia, and hundreds of voters in Magdeburg receiving multiple ballots — before calling postal voting defective and demanding immediate reforms.

DW Fact check: Misleading. Individual cases of fraud, errors or violations do not demonstrate that the entire postal voting system is unreliable or that it has affected the outcome of an election.

The post by the X account with the AfD logo refers to two real incidents, but does so in a misleading way. The claim about an elderly woman may refer to a case in Dessau, where police recently investigated an alleged vote cast on behalf of a 95-year-old woman with "severe dementia" but found no evidence of manipulation. The other incident occurred in Magdeburg, where 440 voters did receive duplicate ballots for the September 6 election ; however, the duplicates were invalidated and could not be used to cast additional valid votes.

Cases of electoral misconduct involving postal ballots have occurred in postal voting, as they have with voting at polling stations. In one case in Dresden, a man manipulated absentee ballots during the 2024 local and state elections, primarily in favor of the far-right Free Saxons party as well as the AfD. And in Bavaria, a former mayor was accused of manipulating postal voting documents in a March 2026 local election.

There have also been documented mistakes, administrative problems and delays in the handling of postal ballots in previous German elections. A 2021 study examining postal voting in German federal elections between 1998 and 2017 found that these weaknesses were primarily related to organization and logistics. Researcher Daniel Hellmann of the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg said, however, that the research was still ongoing.

But such problems are not evidence of widespread fraud or of postal ballots being manipulated on a scale capable of changing an election result.

The 2021 study concluded that postal voting in Germany was secure overall. It found that none of the incidents examined could have changed an election result by even a single seat.

"If problems have occurred, they have generally been reviewed through legal channels and proportionate consequences have been imposed," Lukas Stötzer, an election researcher at the University of Witten/Herdecke in western Germany, told DW. "The postal voting system works and is secure, and that's why it is becoming more popular."

Postal voting easy to manipulate?

Claim: Postal votes are easily manipulated during counting.

"It can be assumed that postal voting in Saxony-Anhalt will massively distort the election result, This is also relatively easy to do, and the checks on postal voting are laughable," wrote one user on X with about 130,000 followers on August 14.

This claim was also a recurring theme among the posts reviewed by DW Fact check, with some of the content presented in satirical, AI-generated cartoons. The AI-generated video depicted here on TikTok and labelled satire, for example, shows a man involved in counting ballots simply altering the votes from AfD to the center-right CDU party, and then calling a man named "Friedrich" — presumably Chancellor Friedrich Merz — to say that he had "everything under control."

DW Fact check: False. Germany has detailed procedures governing the handling and counting of postal ballots. Postal votes are transported, stored and opened according to established rules, and their counting takes place publicly.

Members of the public are generally allowed to observe the election process, including the counting of votes, without having to demonstrate a particular interest or affiliation. This applies to postal ballot counting as well.

That means election officials do not simply open postal ballots and count them behind closed doors. The process is conducted by election boards, whose work can be observed by members of the public and each parties' representatives.

In an interview with German public broadcaster ARD Christa Dieckmann, Saxony-Anhalt's state election commissioner, pointed to public observation as an important safeguard. "The best way to ensure the fairness of the election is to come to the polling station as an observer for elections as the basis for choosing a legitimate government," she said.

DW Fact check also encountered numerous claims promoting what has been dubbed the "nursing home theory," which alleges that elderly people who are unable to vote in person may not be casting their ballots freely, but could instead be pressured or influenced by certain political parties or caregivers.

DW Fact check has investigated similar claims in the past, many of which have been promoted by AfD politicians. It has found no substantial evidence to support the broader allegation that postal voting in nursing homes is systematically manipulated or that elderly voters are routinely pressured into voting for particular parties.

A familiar claim beyond Germany

The doubts surrounding postal voting are not unique to Germany. Similar claims have surfaced during elections in other democracies, often becoming entangled with broader political battles over the legitimacy of elections.

During the 2020 US presidential election, President Donald Trump repeatedly claimed that expanded mail-in voting would lead to widespread fraud. Fact-checkers documented and debunked repeated false and exaggerated claims about the security of mail ballots. Ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, the Trump administration is again seeking to impose new restrictions on mail-in ballots, measures that have faced repeated legal challenges.

Election researcher Stötzer said such claims can become part of a broader political strategy to undermine trust in democratic institutions.

"Right-wing populist parties strategically fuel these doubts," Stötzer said, adding that such claims can later be used to justify electoral law changes that benefit those parties.

He said the immediate impact of such allegations may be limited. But if they are repeated election after election, the longer-term consequences could be more serious.

"Public trust in electoral institutions could suffer," Stötzer said. Election results that are considered undesirable could then routinely be attributed to alleged irregularities in postal voting.

This is a collaborative project between ARD-faktenfinder, and DW Fact check.