Chaotic election day: The 2021 federal elections in Berlin must be repeated in some cases

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New elections should be held in 455 electoral districts and their associated postal voting districts, said the chairman, Doris König. A complaint about election audits by the CDU/CSU faction in the Bundestag was only partially successful.

With its ruling, the highest German court did not exactly follow a ruling by the Bundestag. With the votes of the ‘traffic light factions’ SPD, Greens and FDP, he decided that the elections had to be partially repeated. This would have affected 327 of the capital’s 2,256 constituencies and 104 of the 1,507 postal voting districts.

From the perspective of the CDU/CSU faction, the decision was illegal, partly because the Bundestag did not declare the elections invalid in their entirety in six constituencies contested by the Federal Returning Officer. That is why she filed a lawsuit in Karlsruhe.

The Federal Constitutional Court has now declared the elections invalid in 31 more constituencies than those mentioned in the Bundestag decision. In the end, however, the decision was largely legal.

Election day on September 26, 2021 was chaotic in many Berlin polling stations: people had to wait and queue for a long time, ballot papers were incorrect or missing entirely. Polling stations had to close temporarily or remained open until well after 6 p.m. – the time when voting should have ended. Then there are usually the first predictions.

The simultaneous election for the Berlin House of Representatives had to be repeated in full. This happened on February 12 this year and led to a change of power in the German capital. The Christian Democrats are now the ruling mayor there for the first time in 22 years.

The parliamentary majority of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s (SPD) traffic light coalition is not in danger from the partial repetition that has now been ordered. It could become crucial for the left if it loses one of the two direct mandates it won in Berlin in 2021. Germany’s next federal elections are generally scheduled for late summer or early autumn 2025. Current polls project opposition leader Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats to win.

(SDA)

Source: Blick