On February 12 next year, Berliners are to elect a new House of Representatives – for the second time in a year and a half. The country’s constitutional judges had declared the September 2021 election invalid because of a number of glitches.
So it’s a serious matter, but it brings with it all sorts of oddities. At the invitation of Berlin’s Senator for the Interior, an observer from the Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) is expected to be present on election Sunday. It would be the first time that an election to the House of Representatives alone is so closely scrutinized.
Berlin’s parliamentarians, in turn, had to attend a special session about six weeks ago. One item on the agenda was the change in the Berlin street law, on which all factions – from the left to the AfD – were surprisingly united. Because according to the previous regulation, the poster election campaign would have started at Christmas – of all things. In order to save the holiday break, the start of the hot election campaign phase has now been postponed to January 2nd by decree.
A left is now running for the Greens
The cross-party unity and the election scrutiny are just two examples of a whole series of peculiarities that Berlin’s politicians are now dealing with. “You can really say the word ‘strange’,” says Gordon Lemm. He narrowly failed in the elections to the House of Representatives last September as a direct candidate for the SPD, and a little later Lemm was elected mayor of the Berlin district of Marzahn-Hellersdorf. He enjoys the post, but he still has to run again as a direct candidate in February.
Because: The election in February is a so-called repeat election, for the House of Representatives as well as for the twelve district parliaments. Unlike in new elections, the parties have to run with the same candidates as in the previous election. “The regulations lead to a constellation that you don’t want at all,” says Lemm. “You elect a representative of the SPD from the district, but you don’t elect me personally as a direct candidate.” Because it is already clear that he will not take up the mandate in the event of a victory; Lemm, 45, wants to remain district mayor.
Life doesn’t stop just because Berlin botches a vote: People become mayors, they move, they die or simply reorient themselves.
Just like Ingrid Bertermann. Barely two months after being elected to the Mitte district assembly for the Greens, she switched to the Left Party parliamentary group. Despite considerable pressure from the Greens, Bertermann does not want to forego a candidacy in the upcoming re-election.
“You can’t explain that to anyone outside of Berlin-Mitte,” says Lara Liese, a member of the board of the Greens in the district. The party spoke to Bertermann and also examined all legal options: The 58-year-old left may compete in the promising 17th place on the Green List. “It’s a paradoxical situation,” says Liese. “In terms of democratic theory, that’s actually not sustainable.”
New territory not only for Berlin, but for all of Germany
A repeat election of this magnitude is new territory not only for Berlin, but for all of Germany. In the history of the Federal Republic of Germany there have always been repeat elections, for example in 2012 in Dortmund or in 2015 in the Geiselhöring district in Lower Bavaria. At the state level, an election has only had to be rescheduled in the city state of Bremen, and only one voting district was affected.
The “Herculean task” – as Berlin’s state election officer Stephan Bröchler recently described the organization of the repeat election – now also includes reinterpreting the state election law. Because the regulations for the case of repeat elections are poor.
At the beginning of December, the state electoral office published a list of 25 candidates who had been removed from the party’s state lists. Most have moved since the last election, others have resigned from their posts, and a candidate from the Die Basis party has died. These people have already been replaced by new candidates by the parties.
In the case of direct candidates, the state returning officer has developed a different rule: Gaps caused by relocation or death must be replaced by candidates without their own direct election mandate from the state lists. That sounds simple, but in practice it suddenly becomes quite complicated for some politicians.
For example for Bettina Jarasch. The Green politician is Senator for the Environment and Transport in Berlin and the fiercest competitor of the Governing Mayor Franziska Giffey (SPD). Jarasch almost became head of state in the elections last September, and now she’s back as the top candidate.
Transport Senator Bettina Jarasch from the Greens now has to run in the Spandau district, a rather conservative constituency.
(Photo: Annette Riedl/dpa)
But since she took up office in 2021 without a direct mandate, she now has to fill one of the gaps: In the Berlin district of Spandau, one of the direct candidates of the Greens has moved; If Jarasch does not want to lose her first place on the state list, she has to step in there according to the specifications of the election management.
The candidate comes to the constituency “like the proverbial virgin to the child”
She is looking forward to competing in Spandau, “even if I come to it like the proverbial virgin to the child,” said Jarasch. “The repeat election was a surprise to many of us and will continue to surprise us.” Because it is a candidature with many hooks.
This includes the fact that Jarasch’s predecessor in the constituency recently won just 11.2 percent. Spandau is a rather conservative district on the western outskirts of the city, far away from Prenzlauer Berg and firmly in the hands of the SPD and CDU. And that’s not all: The top candidate of the CDU, Kai Wegner, is running in the district, as is Raed Saleh, parliamentary group and co-chairman of the SPD Berlin.
Saleh and Jarasch are now even fighting for the same constituency – only that Saleh has won the direct mandate there several times since 2006. The Greens do not like the fact that the constituency is now being stylized as the main venue for this vote. “It’s a duel with very different weapons,” says one from the party.
Alexander King of the left has a completely different problem. Politics is temporary power, and with a bit of bad luck, the doctor of geography will find out more quickly than he would like. He has been a parliamentarian in the Berlin House of Representatives for almost exactly a year, a classic successor: Because another politician in his party gave up his mandate shortly after the election, King got his chance.
The 53-year-old took the opportunity, as spokesman on energy policy, to help make Berlin winter-proof; as a media politician, he called for the scandal to be dealt with by the management of the RBB broadcaster at an early stage. “I think the voters got a good job for their vote and for the diets,” King says. “If it were to be over again soon, that would be a shame.”
The danger is all the greater because the left-wing politician Sebastian Scheel is resigning from his resignation and suddenly wants to run again. King had taken over the mandate from him a year ago; now he slips down one place on the state list of the left. Another effect of the re-election is “that MPs who have given up their mandate can now move in again,” says King.