2005 parliamentary elections (PR)

IVU system determines and presents results

The IVU system manages the entire election process after the votes have been counted. On Election Night, the system will first collect the results of all 299 election districts from the sixteen state election commissioners and transmit them to Wiesbaden over encrypted and secure connections. Various plausibility checks will then be applied before the distribution of seats in the new parliament will be determined, including the "excess seats" (Überhangmandate). The system will take into account the existing voting right with all its specific features and variants. The results calculated by the computer will be made more transparent by additional mathematical and textual explications.

On Election Night, it will prepare all the results in the Berlin Reichstag building for politicians, the press and the general public. TV broadcasters will be able to download the results to their own systems via a special interface. Ministries, research institutions and media services will receive the latest information at the same time.
The election results will also be available on the World Wide Web. IVU completely overhauled the Federal Election Commissioner’s Web site for this year’s elections. At its heart is a new content management system (CMS) that provides a convenient way to post and present the extensive information, from statistics and official announcements to press releases. Even before the election, it is worth paying a visit to www.bundeswahlleiter.de, where a great deal of background information on the election has already been posted.

On Election Night, the Reichstag building will provide not only several monitors and projection screens for the federal elections results, but also separate monitors for the state results of each of the sixteen German states. Once the Federal Election Commissioner has determined the official final results, and at the end of a period established by law, the system will automatically generate the Wahlbuch – the official publication on the 2005 parliamentary elections – from the data collected.

The major challenges that IVU’s software developers in Berlin had to meet this year were a short preparation time and the high security requirements imposed on the system. They made further improvements to the system in just a few weeks and adapted it to current conditions.

Unlike all previous German elections, in 2002 the Federal Election Commissioner relied on an automatic election processing system that was developed by IVU in co-operation with the Federal Office of Statistics. This system, which also proved to be an enormous success in the EU parliamentary elections in 2004, will be used once again in this year’s German parliamentary elections. Individual states, such as Saarland, also used it for elections on the state level.

IVU Traffic Technologies AG is a leading supplier of IT systems for planning, operating and optimising transport and logistics processes. Over 25 years of experience developing hardware and software systems for more than 300 public transport companies has also made IVU the market leader for IT solutions in other segments: monitoring truck fleets, setting up retail networks in geo-marketing, election processing. This is IVU's approach to transportation and beyond.

Thomas Vogt
Head of Corporate Communications
IVU Traffic Technologies AG
Bundesallee 88
12161 Berlin Germany
Tel +49 (0)30 85906-800
E-Mail to: Thomas Vogt
Website: www.ivu.de