The federal elections will take place on February 23, 2025. The Saxon universities - together with many other political and civil society organizations - are calling on all members and relatives to exercise their right to vote and cast their ballot this coming Sunday.

Our democracy as a political system as a whole is as little self-evident as the freedom to cast one's vote in a secret ballot according to one's own ideas, interests and the assessment of the organizations and persons standing for election. Together with all other votes cast by voters, your vote will decide the composition of the new Bundestag as the main legislative and democratic control body of the Federal Republic.

How little a liberal-democratic electoral system and corresponding electoral practice can be taken for granted can be seen not only in the recent past, including the non-democratic elections in the GDR, but also in the many authoritarian regimes of the present without free elections or with clear restrictions or manipulation of the free and secret right to vote. The examples range from Afghanistan to Turkey and Russia.

Nobody has to vote in the Federal Republic of Germany - but he or she is allowed to do so, freely and secretly, without having to fear any disadvantages as a result of casting their vote. Elections are and remain central elements of the democratic process, whose legitimacy and political functionality depend on a high voter turnout.

Anyone who needs help deciding how to vote can use the Wahl-O-Mat from the Federal Agency for Civic Education.

The State Rectors' Conference and the Rectorate of Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences ask all eligible voters at Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences to exercise their right to vote in the Bundestag elections on February 23, 2025.

The Rectorate