Apparently minors also voted in Berlin

In Berlin, young people have apparently also cast their votes for the Bundestag and House of Representatives elections or the referendum. This is what the newspapers “Die Welt” and “Tagesspiegel” report. Actually that is The general voting age was 18, but young people aged 16 and over were also allowed to vote at the district council.

The newspapers name three specific cases in the Neukölln and Pankow districts. A schoolgirl returned the incorrectly received ballot. The other two young people assumed that it was correct and should have voted with them.

In Neukölln, district election officer Kristian Schiemann says he has not yet had any information on this. The head of the district election office in Pankow, Marc Albrecht, told the rbb with reference to the other young people: If it happened like this, it was an oversight that should not have happened. The corresponding result in this area is not narrow.

A possible explanation for the process: At the polling station, young people can initially receive all ballot papers. At the ballot box, however, the electoral board must then check that they only throw in the slip of paper for the ballot in which they are entitled to vote. Young people over 16 may vote in the district assembly, but not the Bundestag and the Berlin House of Representatives. Also in the referendum, only Berliners aged 18 and over are entitled to vote.

The portal was already on the weekend “Wahlrecht.de” on Twitter stated that more than a week before the election, they had informed the Berlin state election management of a “serious possibility of manipulation”. According to this, people between the ages of 16 and 17 as well as EU foreigners could use a trick to vote in the Bundestag election and the election to the House of Representatives, although they were only entitled to vote in the BVV.

People who were entitled to all elections could request postal voting documents, pass the ballot papers for the Bundestag and House of Representatives elections on to unauthorized persons, and receive new ballot papers at the polling station on election day. An EU citizen or minor who was actually only eligible for the BVV election could submit the additional ballot papers anonymously with their postal voting documents.

The manipulation could not be proven because the postal voting documents in Berlin only contained one envelope for all voting papers. This procedure differs from the practice in other federal states. According to “wahlrecht.de” she had Petra Michaelis, who has since resigned, changed the rules for the counts shortly before the voting in order to exclude the possibility of manipulation described. It is unclear whether that succeeded.

In addition, according to “Wahlrecht.de”, Berlin had deviated from the federal election regulations when handling empty ballot envelopes: contrary to the requirements, these should not be counted as invalid votes.

There had been a number of mishaps in Berlin on election Sunday. In front of some of the 2,257 polling stations in the 78 constituencies, voters had to queue for a long time. Ballot papers were missing in the meantime and had to be delivered by messenger. That too led to delays. In some cases, votes could therefore only be cast after 6 p.m. In some places voters received false ballots from other districts or constituencies, which were later considered invalid. The counting did not go smoothly everywhere, as reported by election workers rbb | 24. By the middle of the week no results were available from several polling stations in the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district; estimated figures were published on the Internet.

The Berlin Senate had announced that it would discuss the problems on election Sunday on Tuesday. A report from the internal administration is expected. The exact extent of the mishaps is still unclear, as is the question of whether they had any impact on the award of the mandate.

Broadcast: Inforadio, October 4th, 2021, 11 p.m.