As Germany approaches consequential state elections, a familiar tension resurfaces: the gap between how democratic systems actually function and how they are made to appear in the court of public perception. Fact-checkers examining claims about Germany's postal voting system found the evidence clear — isolated incidents exist, as they do in any human institution, but none have altered an election outcome. What is less clear, and more consequential, is whether truth alone can hold the line when doubt is deployed not to inform, but to erode.