Chapters 3–5 demonstrated the existence of pervasive intimidation in German national elections to the Reichstag. Although electoral law mandated universal, direct, secret, and equal suffrage, it provided insufficient protections for voters to cast their votes freely. As a result, core principles of the electoral law were systematically violated in everyday electoral practices. As Heinrich Rickert, one of the German politicians who relentlessly pushed for the adoption of additional electoral reforms, argued: “The freedom of the vote is a guarantee of one of the most important constitutional provisions in Germany. It is the foundation of our constitutional life. If we do not provide sufficient guarantees for it, then our public life will be based on hypocrisy, on pressure, and on force, and those have never led to a good outcome” (Stenographische Berichte des Deutschen Reichstages January 15, 1896).

This violation of the cornerstone of German constitutional life to which Rickert referred resulted from two distinct factors. The first were imperfections in voting technology. As the previous chapters demonstrated, imperfections in the design of the ballot and the design of the urn allowed representatives of political parties to “pierce” the veil of secrecy of the vote and observe the electoral choices made by voters. Second, economic inequalities that increased the dependency of voters on their employers amplified the consequences of these irregularities in voting technology. These economic conditions lowered the costs of electoral repression for employers and increased the credibility of their threat to harshly punish voters who made “incorrect” electoral choices. Economic dependence also undermined the willingness of individual voters to risk their livelihoods by casting different ballots from the ones handed to them by their employers. This combination of institutional imperfections in the electoral code and economic inequalities in the labor market explains the persistence of electoral pressure in German elections.

The goal of this chapter is to examine political efforts to reform electoral institutions and to ensure greater protection of electoral secrecy.