On September 26, 2021, the Germans elected the current Bundestag. In Berlin it was an election day full of mishaps. Some polling stations ran out of ballot papers, while others were distributed incorrectly. In some places voting had to be interrupted for two hours. There were polling stations where you could still cast your vote well after 6 p.m., and the polls’ first forecasts were already available. The Federal Constitutional Court has now decided that the election in the capital must be partially repeated because of the many glitches. There has never been anything like this in the history of the Federal Republic.
Why did the court even have to deal with the issue?
As required, the Bundestag itself took care of dealing with the election mishaps. In November 2022, parliament decided with the votes of the traffic light factions that the election must be repeated in 431 of the 2,256 electoral districts. But that didn’t go far enough for the CDU/CSU faction, so they took the matter to the Federal Constitutional Court. The Union faction pointed out that the then Federal Returning Officer had also called for a much more extensive repetition of the vote in Berlin. The Karlsruhe judges have now decided on the Union faction’s election audit complaint.
Who won in Karlsruhe now? The traffic lights or the Union?
In any case, the red-red-green Berlin Senate, which was in office in the 2021 federal election and is politically responsible for the serious deficiencies in the vote, lost. Who won in Karlsruhe is harder to answer. The Federal Constitutional Court’s decision states that the Bundestag decision made by the traffic light factions was “substantially largely lawful”. However, the judges complain that the decision is based on “insufficient clarification of the election process” since “he neither evaluated the minutes of the individual electoral districts himself nor arranged for them to be evaluated in any other way.” The Union faction’s election audit complaint was “partly justified”. In addition, the Constitutional Court increased the number of electoral districts in which the election must be repeated – but only slightly from 431 to 455.
What effects can the repeat election have?
Almost nothing will change in the Bundestag. This is because the capital only has just under four percent of the representatives and the vote is only repeated in around every fifth electoral district in Berlin. Because the election will not be completely repeated, the Left no longer has to fear that it will lose its direct mandates in Berlin. If it had lost one of these two mandates, it would no longer have benefited from the so-called basic mandate clause and would therefore have lost all mandates won nationwide through lists. However, the state of Berlin could lose seats to other federal states as voter turnout in the repeat election is likely to be significantly lower than in the 2021 election. This would reduce Berlin’s share of the votes cast nationwide.
How do the parties react to the result?
“We are pleased that the Federal Constitutional Court has largely confirmed our decision and that the trust of Berlin voters in the functioning processes of our democracy can be restored,” said the parliamentary managing director of the SPD parliamentary group, Johannes Fechner. The CDU, on the other hand, sees its decision to move to Karlsruhe confirmed. The repeat election is now an opportunity for Berliners to show the federal traffic light coalition “a stop sign,” said General Secretary Carsten Linnemann. The left reacted with satisfaction. “With the verdict it is clear that we will remain in the Bundestag and continue to fulfill our role as a social opposition,” said former parliamentary group leader Dietmar Bartsch. The Greens reacted thoughtfully. “It’s good that we in Germany are carefully checking whether elections took place correctly, but things have to go faster,” said its parliamentary director Till Steffen. The re-election almost two and a half years after the federal election is “difficult to convey”.
How is the repeat election prepared?
There is at least one good thing about the debacle of 2021: Berlin now has experience in preparing such elections. Following the ruling of the Berlin Constitutional Court, the House of Representatives had to be re-elected in February. If you will, this vote was the masterpiece of the new state returning officer Stephan Bröchler. He and his team have also prepared for all conceivable decisions by the Federal Constitutional Court. Suitable locations for the polling stations have already been selected, printing companies for ballot papers have been contacted and previous election workers have been contacted. The biggest problem so far has been the uncertainty about the extent to which new elections will have to be held. In a district like Steglitz-Zehlendorf alone, the number of election workers required varies considerably. With a partial repetition, as has now been decided, the district office expects 270. With a complete repetition it would have been 3,200. The fact that a new vote now only has to take place in a good 20 percent of Berlin’s electoral districts makes the preparations much easier. “We can now concretely translate the planning into decisions,” says state returning officer Bröchler.
When will the election take place?
The regulations stipulate that elections must be made no later than two months after the Karlsruhe decision. The last Sunday in this period is February 11th; The state returning officer has now set this date as election day. This is a challenge, said Bröchler, “because we only have 55 days of the 60 days left”. When the Berlin Constitutional Court declared the election to the House of Representatives last year invalid, there were still 90 days left for the organization due to different regulations at the state level.
Who exactly is to blame for the debacle?
When the new state returning officer Stephan Bröchler commented on this before the Federal Constitutional Court last summer, he cited two main reasons: Berlin’s peculiarity of not immediately bringing all the necessary voting slips to the election offices because of their heavy weight. Many subsequent deliveries then got stuck because of the Berlin Marathon, which was taking place at the same time. Bröchler also blamed a misunderstood Corona hygiene concept for the long queues. The districts apparently mistakenly understood that more than two booths per polling station were not permitted. In addition, there was no central supervision of the election preparations and no one agreed to take responsibility. This should now also change structurally: The Senate will set up permanent electoral offices both at the state level and in the twelve Berlin districts.