check by reading the control unit that each voter had in fact voted and had only done so once. Moreover, it was said that the principle of the public nature of elections was not guaranteed without restriction. It was said to be in conflict with the goal of forming a viable people’s representation in a short time. The Federal Electoral Act was said to attach greater significance to the goal of elections being held in good time and to ascertaining the outcome of the election within a reasonable time than to detailed monitoring by the public. The public nature of the vote counting was said to have been guaranteed. The public was said to be able to check how the result of the constituency ascertained by the voting machine on conclusion of the election act was printed by the returning committee and included in the election record. The returning committee and each election observer were said to be able to compare the ballot records in the voter register and the valid and invalid first and second votes registered by the voting machine, and hence to ascertain whether the device had covered and added all the votes cast. It was said to be not possible to physically cover the individual votes; a totalling procedure which was verifiable for the public was however said not to be necessary since protection against falsification of the election result was said to be ensured by a number of other measures guaranteeing the reliability of the result as with ballot box elections. For instance, the voting machine was examined thoroughly prior to being approved by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt. Comprehensive monitoring by local authorities and returning committees also took place in the run-up to the elections. The local ascertainment of the results was said to guarantee that manipulations on the part of individuals could at most impact the outcome of the election in the respective constituency. 49 Public monitoring was said to be only one factor among many in order to prevent irregularities in the elections, albeit an important one. No measure was said to be able to prevent manipulations or unintentional falsification of the election result by itself. All measures together were however said to guarantee very broad protection of the elections against election falsifications. 50 Since the principle of the public nature of elections had not been violated, it was said not to be necessary to bring forward the public nature of elections by publishing the control results of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt and the source code for the voting machine software. The fundamentally public nature of the preparations for the election and of the election itself could be restricted for reasons of the protection of private data or of operational and business secrets. The type approval, the examinations of the voting machines by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, as well as the conclusive examination by the local authorities, were said to replace monitoring by the public in this respect. 51 The paper record called for by the complainants for subsequent checking of the storage of the votes was said to be by no means non-contentious in expert circles because of its disadvantages. It was said that such a record could be manipulated just 52 12/37