Last Sunday, the state elections took place in Baden-Württemberg. On this occasion, posters were stuck up in the working-class neighborhoods in Freiburg and hundreds of leaflets were distributed propagating the boycott of the election. In Karlsruhe and Lahr, among other places, some posters calling for a boycott of the state elections have also appeared.

That the election boycott is the right answer to the elections of the bourgeoisie has been confirmed again. Thus, the turnout this year collapsed from 70.5% to 63% in relation to the last state election. Once again we can see: The tendency for voter turnout is generally downward. The wtiters of the bourgeoisie are now trying to minimize this fact and, like the Badische Zeirung, speak of a "slight decline" with a drop of 7%. At the same time, the Greens have achieved a "record result" because they have gained two percentage points. This result is to a large extent related to the so-called "climate movement" of recent years, which again this year called for a "climate vote" with stickers and posters everywhere.
The lower voter turnout can probably be attributed primarily to the fact that the so-called protest parties are no longer able to mobilize a significant number of non-voters. The AfD, for example, lost one in three voters, and the new micro parties, whose only issue appears to be the Corona measures, were also unable to score any serious successes. But it is precisely these measures that have once again made it abundantly clear to many that no one in this state represents their interests.
In the working-class neighborhoods, the reaction to the leaflets was generally very positive, and good conversations often developed, with the masses mostly emphasizing that they don't vote anyway and that the rulers do what they want anyway. One point that was emphasized by many was above all the state of emergency that has been in place in the FRG for a year and that only serves the rulers, not us.
Especially remembered here was a situation that developed during an action carried out with posters. There, comrades were asked by a nurse on their way to work what kind of posters they were pasting up. The comrades then told her about the election boycott campaign and were then asked by the woman to put up a poster on her house as well.

These points also clearly show that the masses are further along in many respects than parts of the left, which, for example, cause confusion with slogans such as "Vote AfD out" or appeal to the bourgeois state as part of the ZeroCovid campaign to adopt even stricter restrictions and then lift them as quickly as possible. Those who harbor such illusions in the bourgeois state do not understand its class character or refuse to understand it. Those who believe that elections are an instrument that could serve our class in some way are closing their eyes to this question. Fascism is not fought in parliament. This is proved by the reactionary politics on the federal level as well as on the state level. For more reactionary laws, more repression and the restriction of parliament, there is no need for an AfD. These things are decided by the most diverse parties, from the CDU to the Left, completely independent of the AfD. Thus, even the alleged "storming of the Reichstag" last year was instrumentalized to strengthen the fascist tendency in the state, supposedly, of course, to protect democracy.

So these appeals do not serve us. They serve German imperialism in its quest to become a superpower by consciously or unconsciously striving to increase support for a strong state and to foment reformist illusions.
The task of revolutionaries is to expose this fraud and to continue to uphold the only proletarian tactic at the polls: The active boycott of elections, that is, "agitation, advertising, organization of the revolutionary forces on a larger scale, with redoubled energy, under triple pressure." (Lenin, "The Boycott of the Bulygin Duma and the Uprising").
For the upcoming federal elections in the fall, the task is to implement precisely this and to develop the campaign for boycotting the elections with a double effort.