It has long been considered certain that the Election Review Committee will recommend a partial repetition of the Bundestag elections in Berlin. Now the traffic light representatives agreed on how many constituencies this should happen.
The Bundestag elections of September last year are to be repeated in 431 constituencies according to the will of the traffic light parliamentary groups because of numerous breakdowns in Berlin.
The parliamentary election examination committee should make a corresponding recommendation to the Bundestag this Thursday, according to a statement by the first parliamentary directors Katja Mast (SPD), Irene Mihalic (Greens) and Johannes Vogel (FDP) on Wednesday. The Bundestag should then discuss this recommendation on November 10th or 11th.
Where the election is repeated, it should be done with the same ballot papers as the original election, the statement said. This would mean that citizens could again cast a first and a second vote. “We want to repeat the Bundestag elections where citizens were actually unable to cast their votes due to electoral errors that were found,” said the three representatives of the traffic light coalition.
The fractions corrected their recently made announcements. After that, only about 300 electoral districts should be re-elected – and only with the second vote. However, the current initiative also falls far short of the demand by the Federal Returning Officer to repeat the election in six of Berlin’s twelve constituencies. The twelve constituencies are divided into a total of 2,256 constituencies.
It is unclear what exact effects a repeat election will have. “There are a wide variety of scenarios,” said the chairwoman of the election examination committee, Daniela Ludwig (CSU), on Wednesday of the German Press Agency (DPA). It could happen that after that, for example, fewer MPs from Berlin will sit in the Bundestag. It could also be that a member of parliament from another federal state falls out of parliament again. “But that’s pure speculation.”
In Berlin on September 26, 2021, there were massive problems in the elections to the House of Representatives and the Bundestag, such as wrong or missing ballot papers, too few ballot boxes, the temporary closure of polling stations, and sometimes hours of waiting. In some places, voters voted well after 6:00 p.m. or on hastily copied ballot papers due to a lack of supplies.
Broadcast: rbb24 Inforadio, October 19, 2022, 6:20 p.m