Texas Early Voting Heats Up; Wedding Answers with a Kiez ‘Senate’ Primary (Candidates: Two Döner Stands, a Tram Stop, One Very Ambitious Pig
Inspired by the Texas early‑vote circus, Wedding stages its own parody primary — early voting booths at the bakery, ballot boxes from flatpack shelving, and poll‑watchers who take their job extremely personally.
By Clara Brook
Imported Outrage & Kiez Satirist
As early voting kicked off in Texas’ Senate primaries this week, a small conspiracy of local cynics in Wedding decided Berlin needed its own spectacle. For the next fortnight, residents can cast “early votes” at a Turkish bakery, a Späti-turned-booth, and a popup under the tram shelter to decide who will be the symbolic Kiez Senator — a title granting dubious powers: control of the sunlit bench, naming rights to the corner plant, and one amplified “state of the hood” address.
Organizers from the collective Repair Democracy e.V. opened polls Saturday. Ballot boxes were improvised from flatpack shelving; voting booths were sheets hung behind bread racks; poll workers handed voters a sticker and a free pickle upon exit. “We watched Texas and thought: why leave the circus overseas?” said organizer Anja Wolf. “Here at least the candidates can smell the consequences.”
The candidate list is simple and performative: two rival döner stands (Yusuf’s Kebab and Can’s Imbiss), the Mauerstraße tram stop (nominated by a fringe group of transit romantics), and a very ambitious pot-bellied pig owned by a retiree who calls him ‘Comrade Pork.’ Yusuf Demir, owner of Yusuf’s Kebab, grinned at the makeshift podium. “If I win, I will protect the bench. People need places to sit when life is hard and kebab is healing,” he said, stuffing a campaign leaflet into a pita as though it were a ballot box.
Voting followed a predictable Berlin choreography: earnest expats reading translation apps aloud, pensioners debating the ethics of electing a pig, and a noisy cohort of self-styled poll-watchers who took their duty extremely personally — one man printed tiny badges that read “Election Integrity Squad” and would not stop rearranging the ballot boxes. “We’re coming from behind in the polls,” joked an earnest volunteer, which was true literally for the pig, who was trailing until an unexpected late surge of support from a youth poetry group.
The tram stop’s nomination produced one small impossibility: during Monday’s rush, the station’s announcement speaker briefly cut into the loop and blared, in a perfectly mundane automated tone, “Vote Mauerstraße Tram Stop.” BVG responded brusquely in a statement: infrastructure cannot stand for office and public-address systems are for timetables, not endorsements. The Bezirksamt warned organizers about permits and potential fineable nuisances.
The whole event read like a Brechtian farce — civic theatre pretending to solve apathy while providing voters with stickers and snacks — and a little like Camus’ notion of rebellion, small and stubborn, against the boredom of politics. Police said they were monitoring for disorder; no arrests yet, only one minor scuffle over a sunbed.
District officials must now decide whether to recognize the vote or treat it as street theatre. Repair Democracy insists the next step is a runoff: whoever wins will deliver a “state of the hood” address from the kebab counter. Whether the Bezirksamt will allow a pig on stage remains unresolved, and whether anyone learned anything from Texas is probably up for the sticker-lined ballot box to decide.