Old ballot papers from the 2019 European elections that were accidentally circulated briefly raised suspicions of an attempted election fraud in Bad Reichenhall. On Thursday, the all-clear was given: the serious suspicion of deliberate election manipulation had been dispelled, the city of Bad Reichenhall announced. “Rather, it was a human oversight in the preparation of the election.”
The suspicion arose because a citizen had received a ballot paper for the European elections in June on which the FDP’s election proposal had already been ticked. Two ballot papers with the same voting decision were also issued and complained about by voters. Two more ballot papers with a cross for the FDP were then found among the documents still to be issued.
The investigation into the case has now revealed that these were old ballot papers from the 2019 European elections, which are similar in shape, size and appearance to the current ballot papers. However, the ballot papers were not deliberately put into circulation with the intention of influencing the elections.
According to the information, a city employee experienced in conducting elections was able to solve the case. He reported that he had taken the ballot papers from a package of valid votes from the 2019 European elections stored in the document destruction room in order to check the dimensions of the ballot papers and draw conclusions for the preparation of this year’s European elections. Due to a communication error, the ballot papers were not returned to the document destruction room, but were folded and placed with the postal voting documents for this year’s European elections.
“It is clear that, due to a human error, five marked ballot papers from the 2019 European elections ended up in the documents to be issued for the 2024 European elections. This annoys us very much,” commented Mayor Christoph Lung. “However, through our behavior in response to the incident, we have shown that we have investigated the matter quickly and seriously and are very grateful to the state investigative authorities for their work.” The city had filed a complaint against unknown persons on suspicion of attempted election fraud; the Traunstein public prosecutor’s office had already launched an investigation.