Re-election with obstacles
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Old glitches, new glitches
Mon 01/23/23 | 7:32 p.m. | from
In the preparations for the Berlin repeat election, new glitches keep coming to light. The new state returning officer speaks of “mistakes that must not happen”. Nevertheless, the situation is much better than in 2021. By Christopher Reinhardt
A missing ballot number on a return envelope in Reinickendorf. A missing official seal on a polling card in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. An incorrect election date on an English-language BVV election information sheet. In the Treptow-Köpenick district, in
In 49 cases, postal voting documents were sent twice, as a spokeswoman for the district now announced on request. The reason is a software error.
appointment to the internal committee
Three weeks before the repeat election, the interior committee of the Berlin House of Representatives summoned the SPD interior senator and the new state returning officer. They should explain to the MPs why, despite all the precautions taken after the embarrassing chaos of 2021, there are new irritations week after week.
For the SPD interior senator Iris Spranger, the diagnosis is clear: the high level of sensitivity in dealing with even the smallest breakdowns gives the wrong impression. “I don’t think there has ever been a situation in which a state returning officer went into the election so prepared. And that every single issue that arose was immediately discussed and corrected by the returning officer, the office and the districts.”
Spranger: “Individual cases, all smaller individual cases”
Even if there is nothing to correct, state returning officer Stephan Bröchler publishes alleged election errors on his website. When the CDU complained that the polling card number was missing on a red return envelope, Bröchler made it clear that this was not mandatory and that the votes cast would not become invalid as a result.
More effort was caused by a glitch in which 1,700 postal voters received a wrong ballot. The FDP candidate left Berlin after the election and should have been removed from the ballot without being replaced. There was no successor, but his name was printed again anyway. The mailing was stopped, the ballot papers were reprinted – and all those affected were written to so that they could apply for a new ballot paper.
Bröchler explains that double voting is prevented in this case because the first ballot paper is invalidated and the ballot papers originally used are not even counted. But the votes of those who do not become active would also be counted – in this case, however, the votes for the warped FDP applicant would be invalid. “That shouldn’t happen, it annoys me immensely,” says Bröchler. “But there are no 100 percent flawless elections.”
“Every mistake is taken seriously and corrected”
An error is simply embarrassing, in which the middle name of a candidate was just as wrongly copied from the 2021 ballot for the repeat election. Although the applicant had already reported the error at the time. The employee who committed the evasion worked 18 hours that day, says Bröchler, “he’s totally contrite.” Bröchler relies on a deliberately open approach to such mistakes: he wants to signal to Berliners that every breakdown and mistake is taken seriously and corrected.
At least he cannot complain about the lack of confidence of voters in postal voting: The state returning officer has counted around 364,000 ballot papers so far, slightly more than at the corresponding time before the last election. This is a good sign for a trouble-free election day: the more people vote by post, the less pressure there is in the polling stations. Significantly more election workers are now planned there, more time in the polling booths, although fewer ballot papers have to be filled out – the situation is completely different than in the chaos elections of 2021, the election officer states.
Access rights for the state returning officer
Nevertheless, Bröchler calls for more powers and better equipment for his authority, at least in the long term. In order to be able to ensure the smooth running of the 2024 European elections, the 2025 federal elections and the regular 2026 Berlin elections, the state returning authority needs access rights to the districts and more staff.
Immediately after the repeat elections, the MPs would have to start working on the proposals of the expert commission and adapt the Berlin electoral law, SPD Interior Senator Spranger urged the MPs. However, the repeat elections must still be carried out under the same legal conditions as the 2021 elections, as the state constitutional court has expressly confirmed. However, Spranger does not want to accept this as an excuse for another bumpy election night. She expects everyone involved to pull together, if only because of the external impact. “I would like to restore the image of the federal capital Berlin: We can vote.”