Thom Hartmann states that in Germany people fill in hand marked ballots which are hand counted by civil servants watched over by volunteer representatives of the political parties It s totally clean and easily audited And even though it takes a week or more to count the vote the German people know the election results the night the polls close because the news media s exit polls for two generations have never been more than a tenth of a percent off Unfortunately he s wrong Generally all votes are counted twice by midnight Then the preliminary final results are announced and the candidates who won are contacted so they can state whether they accept their seats or not They have a week to reply and then the final results are announced it s got nothing to do with counting votes for a week btw the final result of the election as a whole can take even more time because somtimes some precincts vote later than the other This year a candidate died in Dresden after the ballots had been finalised and therefore the precinct voted two weeks later