I'm both a German and US citizen, have lived back and forth between the two countries my entire life, and vote in both countries. Germany is definitely far ahead in the mechanics of democracy: ballot design, voter education, voter id, single set of coherent rules across the nation, etc. That's the benefit of having a great reset of the country a mere 70 years ago (or 23 years ago, depending on where in Germany).
You usually register at the town's "citizen's office", where you can also pay for your garbage disposal, get parking passes, apply for your driver's license, have the lost+found, and so on.
Registering at the police station is something from the sixties or seventies, I think. "Police" back then had a lot more duties that are now located in other administrative offices.
But "police" is a complicated term in Germany, anyway. Legally it's not just "the guys who chase criminals".
Elsewhere it's even stranger: To me "Polizei" sounds like a friendly civilian force for order, while "Miliz" sounds paramilitary and dangerous. To Russians it seems to be different.
