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Election notice in Berlin-Schmargendorf last fall
Photo: Christoph Soeder / dpa
After the chaos in the Bundestag elections in Berlin, the election is to be repeated in some polling stations.
The traffic light had agreed on this on Thursday.
Now the chairwoman of the Bundestag's Election Review Committee, Daniela Ludwig, has massively criticized the decision.
"The traffic light is trying to downplay the election debacle," she tells SPIEGEL.
»But something like that cannot be trivialized.«
After the election chaos had been dealt with, the SPD, Greens and FDP agreed to hold by-elections in 400 constituencies.
From Ludwig's point of view, that's clearly not enough, she's calling for new elections in more than 1,200 of the 2,300 polling stations.
"Everything else is a despondent, minimally invasive intervention that further shakes trust in democratic institutions," said the CSU politician.
On September 26, 2021, there were long queues in front of several polling stations in Berlin, and some citizens were still voting after the first projections were published.
Four votes were taken on election day.
The main reason for the delays was the lack of ballot papers, and it was difficult for supplies to reach the bars because of the major Berlin Marathon event.
400 or 1200 polling stations?
The number of places in which post-elections take place can be decisive: the new elections in Berlin could trigger a veritable chain reaction.
According to a calculation by the Federal Returning Officer, a repeated vote in all constituencies would threaten up to eight mandates.
Accordingly, the Audit Committee has proposed a smaller solution.
The changes would then probably not be so dramatic, but members of the Bundestag are still trembling about their mandates.
The focus of the more than 400 constituencies proposed by the traffic light is in the constituencies of Berlin-Reinickendorf, Berlin-Mitte, Berlin-Pankow, Berlin Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Berlin Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf and Berlin Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg.
The representatives of the traffic light coalition in the Election Review Committee have now asked the Bundestag administration to draw up a recommended resolution for the German Bundestag that provides for the new elections in the electoral districts.
This is to be decided in the Bundestag in October.
So that the chaos does not repeat itself, the capital should get its own state electoral office.
The commission, which analyzed the problems of the election day on behalf of the Berlin interior administration, demands this in its final report.
According to the Commission's proposal, the state electoral office should be able to control the logistics of the election centrally and plan it together with the districts.
She also suggests hiring external companies to deliver and collect the ballot papers and polling booths.
So far, the districts have regulated this independently, in some electoral boards picked up the documents themselves and sometimes transported them on bicycles.
mrc/has
