The aforementioned Paschke, a lively and eager man, told me that he believed the liberals are capable of all sorts of dirty tricks: making conservative ballots disappear or switching them or deliberately soiling them (by touching their dirty and oiled boots beforehand), which invalidates them. Apparently, for the 35 election committees required for Danzig, Winter, who mobilized all urban civil servants for Rickert, has appointed 30 liberal and 5 conservative election commissioners; and with a certain degree of skill or audacity, the election commissioner can very easily suppress ballots even during the count. In Berlin things will be just as bad or even worse. Paschke told me: “The elections are public, therefore persons other than the election commissioners can be present in the polling station. I have had a copy of the electoral lists supplied to me, and there will be two sure conservative supporters sent to each polling station with these lists as a monitoring commission: They will 1) keep a close eye on the election commissioner, 2) check whether any conservative voters are still missing and have them fetched from their homes – by agents waiting at the door (4-5 in front of each polling station) – to cast their votes in the afternoon; everyone is to be dragged along, and the superbly organized Catholics will render invaluable service to this end, 3) keep a close watch during the count to see to it that no election ballots are torn up, etc. Moreover, all voters should be told: “Be sure that the election commissioner who takes the ballot has clean hands, otherwise insist that he wash his hands.” –
That is good organization! Please give the details to Seckendorff and Luckhardt et al. for them to follow. –
Farewell now,
Your loyal HB.
print version
return to list
previous document