Who am I voting for?

      From the creator of the Vote in Paris and Game of Thrones - Cotroceni Version posts, you have the chance to read tonight a brand new article regarding a administrative politic subject. With much fanfare: The mayor elections in Cologne.

      Everything started at the end of August, when I received per post an invitation to the elections alongside the voting paper. Apparently anyone who has been registered in the city hall has the right to participate in the democratic process. Date of the elections 13 September 2015. They were also looking for volunteers to help with the process, but being busy with some thing I declined.
     Some time later the newspapers and television were roaring with articles about the ballot scandal. Apparently the name of the parties were written larger than the name of the people. That's why they took the decision of postponing the vote and reprinting the papers. All good. Simple, right? Erm... partially. They forgot the old date on the ballots. So a new change had to be done and the 18th of October was chosen as the new date.
     This time I was available and all the fuss made me curious and remembered me of Caragiale. So, along with Sinziana, we registered as volunteers for the voting place nearby. We received afterwards an election manual, where everything was explained in a german way. It looks something like this:

     If you don't understand what is written, you can go to some training courses that last for 2 hours. Overestimating our duties I also went to one of these. In an interesting and funny manner everything was clarified. The only question remaining: Who am I voting for?
     There was a number of 7 candidates on the list, with 2 of them having the best chances. The SPD candidate Jochen Ott and Henriette Reker, not representing a party, but being backed by a coalition. The last on the list, Kevin Krieger was the only one born after '90, more exactly in 1991. You don't get to stamp the ballot in Germany. You simply write an X with the pen. Moreover there are no full voting booths like in Romania, just a paravane with 3 walls. You can admire the voting paper in all its beauty here:

     But how did the election campaign go? In order to find out I took a little walk through the neighborhood. And I took photos of the findings. The Ott campaign was very well delivered, so congrats for his team. When I saw the campaign for the first time I thought that OTT was the name of a party. In the meantime I got a little smarter. Both leading candidates tackled subject such as job situation, housing, transportation and the refugees. And talking about that. Mrs Reker hat a big shock on the day before the elections. She was attacked on the street with a big knife, 40 cm blade, by a right extremist. That sent her in the hospital for some operations but also in the front of the polls.

     And the big Sunday came. We woke up at 6:30, got ready and in an hour we were at the voting place. In the building were a number of 10 pooling stations and each had 1000 people on the lists. The day passed slowly and the participation was pretty low. There were no incidents, some mildly-crazy people strolled by to ask about the situation. At 6 p.m. the stations were closed and we started counting. After an hour we finished, we delivered the results and we could go home. In the evening we found out that Mrs Reker, the lady with the stabbing, won from the first round with 52.66%. The details are to be seen in the graph:

     So that were the election in a nutshell. Now we have to wait for the mayor the recuperate from her wounds. By the way, she is the first lady mayor that this city has. I wish you a quiet night!

    R.C.