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Redial in Berlin? Legal aftermath

2021-10-14T12:33:30.374Z


Some things didn't go smoothly in Berlin on election day. The republic shook its head at the capital. Now one thing is certain: the matter is far from over.


Some things didn't go smoothly in Berlin on election day.

The republic shook its head at the capital.

Now one thing is certain: the matter is far from over.

Berlin - The numerous mishaps and problems in the election to the Berlin House of Representatives on September 26th have legal consequences. The regional election management announced on Thursday an objection to the election results at the Berlin Constitutional Court. In two constituencies, there were violations of the law that could affect the distribution of mandates, said state returning officer Petra Michaelis at a meeting of the election committee. A repetition of the election is now possible there. The Constitutional Court must decide on this after examining the events.

The objection relates, on the one hand, to constituency 6 in the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district, where the SPD politician Franziska Becker was first chosen as the winner and then, after a recount, the Green Alexander Kaas-Elias. The constituency 1 in the Marzahn-Hellersdorf district, in which the AfD politician Gunnar Lindemann won the direct mandate, is also affected. In both constituencies, the gap between first and second place in the first vote is very small.

"In these cases, irregularities could have had an impact on the mandate," said Michaelis. As examples, she cited incorrectly issued ballot papers or the temporary closure of polling stations due to missing ballot papers. The Berlin AfD has already announced an objection to the Berlin election, as has the satirical party The Party. This is only possible after the final result has been published in the Official Journal. According to the election management, this can take up to three weeks.

Should a new election actually take place in the constituencies in question, this may have more or less effects on the composition of the 147-member state parliament, depending on the result.

Two direct mandates would have to be newly awarded, and the result of the second vote would also be affected.

In both constituencies together, a good 62,000 people could vote, i.e. around 2.5 percent of all eligible voters in Berlin.

Overall, there were irregularities in the election to the House of Representatives in 207 of 2,257 polling stations (around nine percent), as Michaelis further announced.

"That is a number that must scare and annoy us all," she said.

On the other hand, she could state that the election in over 2000 polling stations went off without any problems.

After checking all the relevant documents from all Berlin districts, Michaelis presented a list with details of what went wrong.

These included delays in sending postal voting documents, incorrect or missing ballot papers.

For the latter reason, the election process in 78 pubs was temporarily interrupted - for up to two hours.

In 56 polling stations, no ballot papers were given out at times, even though they were available.

Michaelis suspected that the cause was an oversight or excessive demands on the local election boards.

In a few individual cases, 16- and 17-year-olds who were only eligible to vote for the district parliaments were also able to cast their votes for other elections.

Michaelis named long queues in front of polling stations as a further problem. 1773 polling stations were open longer than usual, so that voters who were there until 6 p.m. could still cast their votes - in individual cases until shortly before 9 p.m. However, this is not an election mistake, says Michaelis.

On September 26, not only the House of Representatives was elected in Berlin, but the citizens also cast their votes for the Bundestag and twelve district council assemblies. In addition, voters could vote in a referendum on the expropriation of large housing companies. Such a concentration of votes, for which 15 million ballot papers were printed, had never existed in this form before. In addition, there was the Berlin Marathon on the same day, which, for example, slowed down the hastily organized subsequent deliveries of missing ballot papers.

Nevertheless, the electoral committee determined the final result of the House of Representatives election on Thursday.

Compared to the preliminary result, which was announced on September 27, there were only marginal changes without any impact on the distribution of mandates.

However, the percentage values ​​for the second votes behind the decimal point changed by 0.1 points for the CDU, Left and FDP.

According to the final result, the SPD was the strongest force with 21.4 percent of the second votes.

It is followed by the Greens with 18.9 percent and the CDU with 18.0 percent.

The Left reached 14.1 percent, the AfD 8.0 percent and the FDP 7.1 percent.

The 147 seats in the House of Representatives are distributed as follows: SPD 36, Greens 32, CDU 30, Linke 24, AfD 13 and FDP 12. The turnout was 75.4 percent.

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Three elections, one referendum, five ballot papers, six crosses - the organizers in Berlin probably underestimated the amount of time that some of the voters needed to cast their votes.

The result: long waiting times.

The error analysis is not much faster either.

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Significantly more postal votes before the Bundestag election in Dresden

Many voters in Dresden want to forego going to the polling station in the federal election.

A good week before the vote on September 26, around 153,000 postal votes have been received so far, as the city administration announced on Friday.

This corresponds to about 36 percent of the 424,000 eligible voters in the Saxon state capital.

Significantly more postal votes before the Bundestag election in Dresden

As a consequence of the problems, Michaelis had offered to resign, she had been recalled by the Senate and had her last working day in this position on Thursday.

dpa

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2021-10-14

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