For the fact that Berlin’s state returning officer had already resigned her office two weeks ago, she was still ruling her office in the past few days. On Monday, Petra Michaelis first presented the official final result for the federal election, i.e. the Berlin part of it. Then on Thursday she presented the official final result for the election to the House of Representatives in Berlin. After all, Michaelis was still sitting in the interior committee of the House of Representatives that Friday. Once again it was about the super election Sunday in Berlin with four votes and a marathon, which did not go so well. “For me as a former regional returning officer, the last chapter is closed,” said Michaelis without any noticeable relief.
While the election officer has done her job, she is now starting elsewhere. After all, there is the possibly somewhat bizarre situation that government constellations are being negotiated both in the federal government and in Berlin, while at the same time the legitimacy of this election is repeatedly questioned. Berlin’s Senator for the Interior Andreas Geisel (SPD) also admitted in the Interior Committee that there were “a not inconsiderable number of legal errors.” However, this did not lead to “the elections becoming invalid as a whole”. The discrepancies are too small for that compared to the clear election results.
Nevertheless, Geisel did not rule out the possibility that he, like the state election control, would appeal against the election result. To do this, however, you have to analyze the election result further. The chairman of the Bundestag electoral examination committee, Patrick Sensburg (CDU), also said that a “very thorough examination was necessary”. In principle, with the publication of the official results, objections to the election can be raised for a certain period of time. How exactly this happens depends on which vote is involved.
The Bundestag decides on objections to the election
The Bundestag election review committee is responsible for the Bundestag election. Anyone who thinks they have a legally sound objection to the election can turn there by midnight on November 26th. Last Wednesday, over 100 such objections had already arisen, a larger part of them from Berlin. The Bundestag then decides with a simple majority. “I could even imagine that the election review committee of the German Bundestag will negotiate the objections against the election in Berlin in public,” said Sensburg Handelsblatt. This could perhaps regain some of the lost trust. If the Bundestag rejects an objection, an election review complaint can be submitted to the Federal Constitutional Court.
However, the vote on the Berlin House of Representatives, which took place on the same day, seems to be more controversial than the federal election. Most of the irregularities relate to this election – the objection by the election management is also related to two direct mandates in the House of Representatives. Objections are possible here if the final result is published in the Berlin Official Gazette, i.e. from next week. In contrast to the general election, the voters themselves are only entitled to this right in exceptional cases; it is primarily reserved for parties or elected officials. The addressee is not the House of Representatives, but the State Constitutional Court, the objection period is one month.
The hurdles for new elections are high both at the federal level and in the federal states. The decisive factor is whether an election error was “relevant to the mandate”, for example whether the number of disputed votes in a constituency is higher than the difference in votes between the first and second place. Then the election in this constituency would be declared invalid and it would have to be re-voted. Numerous experts assume that this will be necessary after the examination period. In this manageable framework, however, new elections should then be manageable even in Berlin.