Big problems sometimes have very simple causes. In Berlin, for example, it is a rule that election officers collect the ballot papers from the district office the day before an election, take them home and bring them to the polling station the next morning. Actually not a problem, but on September 26 last year, Berliners were supposed to vote four times: on the Bundestag, the House of Representatives, the district assemblies and on a referendum. That’s about four times the amount of paper.
Some offices gave the volunteers only part of the ballot paper. But the next day, many a subsequent delivery got stuck in the Berlin marathon, which also took place on this Sunday. In the end, polling stations had to close early because they ran out of documents. Just one reason why last fall’s elections turned into a disaster for Berlin. “The breakdowns on election day were not a natural phenomenon that befell those responsible,” says Stephan Bröchler.
The administrative scientist is one of 19 members of an independent commission of experts that processed the election. It was used by the Berlin Senate last year, and the final report was presented on Monday. The experts, including electoral officers, emphasize that it was not about the exact processing of what happened. This is the task of the Berlin Constitutional Court and the Bundestag’s Election Review Committee. Both institutions are due to decide in the course of this year whether parts of the elections to the Bundestag and the House of Representatives have to be repeated. The Commission, on the other hand, looked at the structural problems in order to develop suggestions for improvement.
“Someone should have at least had a sleepless night.”
And there were not only problems with the transport of the ballot papers. Boxes with false documents had been delivered to the district offices days before the election. “Why didn’t the alarm bells go off?” asks election expert Robert Vehrkamp. “Someone should have at least had a sleepless night.” There were hints from the state returning officer, “but the constructive solution to the problem then trickled away.”
This case is symptomatic of the conduct of elections in Berlin. Because who is responsible for what is not sufficiently regulated between the state government and the districts. Above all, the role of the state returning officer is largely undefined, she is a “queen without a country”. The Commission therefore recommends strengthening the position of this office and developing it into an independent state electoral office.
The coexistence of the state level and districts also meant that there were not enough rooms and polling booths available for the election in September. While countries such as Hamburg or Bremen have massively increased capacities in comparable multiple elections, this has hardly happened in Berlin. In addition, the commission advises to standardize the conduct of the elections more. For example, the twelve Berlin districts have so far trained their volunteers differently. It is important to “remove the ‘patchwork’ that has existed here up to now,” says the final report. The experts also criticized the documentation of the election process; the election workers had partly submitted illegible and incomplete reports because of the stress that day. “A previously missing quality control is to be set up.”
Daniela Berger is a member of the Commission and on September 21 was the honorary head of an election office. She points out that this election Sunday has left a lot of the aid workers frustrated. She appealed to the people of Berlin: “Sign up as an election worker. Make the elections your elections,” says Berger. “Then we will probably experience calmer waters again.”