Ebbie,
I have to be embarrassed for admitting to having opened a thread expecting a theme I despise.

Anyway, we can vote about four to six weeks in advance. That's normally safe enough, but of course there are individual difficulties as German scientists in an Antarctic station or once a German in a Russian space station during elections and I don't know how they handle that.

I should add that there is an agreement (or a law, perhaps) in Germany that prediction polls are not to be published by whoever in the last couple of days before an election and that exit polls may not be made public before closing time of the polling stations in order not to influence the late voters. The parties, however, know the exit polls early and so at about noon they know whether they have lost or won and start preparing thier statements.
If it is too close, however, the poor politicians have to wait for the final result as all others. I remember when years ago in the largest German land (North-Rhine Westphalia) one party had 4.997% of the votes (parties with fewer than 5% are not allowed in the parliaments) and everybody had to wait until 4 am next morning until it was sure whether the socialists had the absolute majority or the conservative opposition had a big win. Politicians and journalists hate these situations, I love them.

Wolfgang