Germany runs its federal elections through a job that has no end date. The Federal Returning Officer, in German the Bundeswahlleiterin or Bundeswahlleiter, is appointed “for an indefinite period” by the Federal Minister of the Interior, and so is the deputy. In plain terms: nobody renews this appointment, because it never expires.
The title also comes with a second job. Since the days of the German Reichstag elections, the post has traditionally gone to whoever heads the Federal Statistical Office. Think of it like a referee who also keeps the scoreboard.
Who holds it now
Dr. Ruth Brand has done both jobs since 1 January 2023. The Statistical Office, Destatis, announced her appointment on December 15, 2022, as successor to Dr. Georg Thiel. Born in Lemgo in 1967, Brand holds a doctorate in economics and moved to the Statistical Office in 2001. Before the top job she spent time as head of the department covering health, social statistics, education and households, and from April 2020 she led the procurement agency of the Federal Ministry of the Interior. The official biography adds one more fact: she is not a party member.
She is only the second woman to lead the Statistical Office. Hildegard Bartels was the first, running it from 1972 to 1980.
What the officer does
The Returning Officer sits at the top of a ladder. Elections are organized at federal, state, district and polling-station level, and the federal office handles both Bundestag votes and elections to the European Parliament from Germany. Its address is the Statistical Office in Wiesbaden. The Federal Elections Act and the European Elections Act, with their regulations, set out the rules.
Brand spelled out how the system protects the count in a January 15, 2025 interview with deutschland.de before the Bundestag election. Her office answers disinformation by posting “transparent and correct information about the election process” on social media. Computers produce the preliminary results, she said, but “the final election result will be calculated in any case on the basis of the actual ballot papers.” Electoral boards “monitor one another,” and ballots can be recounted whenever needed.
Postal voting carries its own safeguards. Voters declare on oath that they marked the ballot themselves, and filling in someone else’s ballot is prosecutable. Municipalities send a notification to the home address when postal documents are being sent somewhere else. Because the 2025 election came at short notice, she warned that voters had “considerably less time” to vote by post.
Sources
- Federal Returning Officer (The Federal Returning Officer, official glossary)
- 2025 Bundestag elections: Federal Returning Officer Ruth Brand (deutschland.de)
- The Federal Returning Officer – Dr. Ruth Brand (official biography page)
- Ruth Brand to become President of the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis press release)
