The Federal Returning Officer is not exactly known as a hothead. When it comes to the last election in Berlin, Georg Thiel can no longer hold back. Last September there were not only individual errors, but a “complete systematic failure of the electoral organization,” says Thiel. “Something like this shouldn’t happen in the federal capital of a civilized country.”
The Berlin Constitutional Court has already made it clear that it considers it necessary to largely repeat the elections to the House of Representatives, which took place at the same time as the Bundestag elections. The court plans to announce its decision on November 16th. However, it is still unclear what will happen with the general election. This Thursday, the Bundestag’s election examination committee will discuss it – and so far only one thing is certain: the traffic light groups and the Union are completely at odds.
There were blatant abuses, that is undisputed
What is the dispute about? The decisive factor for a re-election is the relevance of the mandate, i.e. the question of whether there could have been a different distribution of seats without the glitches. The Federal Returning Officer is of the opinion that this is the case. On the one hand, the lead in the Berlin-Reinickendorf constituency, with which Monika Grütters (CDU) won the direct mandate, is so small that it could be the result of the breakdowns. On the other hand, breakdowns in the Berlin constituencies of Mitte, Pankow, Reinickendorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf and Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg-Prenzlauer Berg Ost could also have falsified the second vote result relevant to the mandate.
If the SPD had received a total of at least 802 more second votes, it would have one more seat in the Bundestag. The Federal Returning Officer therefore demands a complete rerun of the election in the six constituencies. “It’s not just about one seat more or less for a party, it’s also about sending a clear signal to the citizens: it’s certain that your vote counts,” says the parliamentary manager of the SPD parliamentary group, Johannes fechner Because the right to vote is “the central opportunity for participation in democracy”.
It is undisputed between Ampel and Union that there were blatant abuses in the federal elections in Berlin. However, it is still disputed what should be considered an election glitch. And with it, how relevant these mishaps are to the mandate and how extensively new elections must be made as a result. The representatives of the traffic light parties in the Election Review Committee consider the Federal Returning Officer’s assessment to be too broad. You don’t want to have all of the votes re-elected in six of the twelve Berlin constituencies, but only in about 300 of the 2,200 Berlin polling stations. In addition, only the second vote should be allowed to be cast again there. The traffic light parties, for example, only see it as a voting error if a polling station was open beyond 6:45 p.m. due to Berlin’s disorganization. The first projections were already available at this time.
“The traffic light proposal doesn’t even begin to do justice to the chaos in the elections in Berlin – obviously there are purely party tactical considerations at play here, because the FDP and Greens fear losing mandates if the elections are repeated,” complains the first parliamentary manager of the Union faction, Thorsten Frei. The traffic light “turned the criteria until the politically desired result of only 300 polling stations came out”. Instead, the Union demands that citizens be able to cast their second vote again in at least half of the polling stations. And that there should also be a repeat of the first vote in Reinickendorf and Pankow because of the tight results.
Voter turnout is likely to be lower if it is repeated
A repetition of the election can change not only the majorities between the Berlin parties and the composition of the Bundestag. The state of Berlin is likely to lose seats in the Bundestag – across all parties. Why? In the general election, turnout in the capital was 75.2 percent. It can be assumed that fewer citizens will take part in a repetition of the election. This would reduce the proportion of votes cast in Berlin in relation to the votes cast nationwide – and with it the number of mandates to which the capital is entitled.
The Federal Returning Officer has already had various scenarios calculated. If – as demanded by the Federal Returning Officer – the vote were to be repeated in six of the twelve Berlin constituencies, the second vote ratio of the parties remained the same as in the Bundestag election, but the turnout was only 60 percent, Berlin would lose six seats in the Bundestag.
Because of the complex German electoral law, a different election result in Berlin also has consequences outside the capital: For example, if the CDU result is worse in Berlin in North Rhine-Westphalia, the Christian Democrat Jürgen Hardt could lose his Bundestag mandate, he was the last in the Bundestag last September NRW state list of his party just got into the Bundestag.
Because of the significant differences between the traffic light and the Union faction, there should still be no agreement this Thursday. The chairwoman of the election examination committee, Daniela Ludwig (CSU), considers this to be absurd. “It has been proven that there were significant misconduct in the election, which cannot be accepted in a constitutional state,” says Ludwig. “If the impression is created that corrections are being played for the time being and that mistakes should only be corrected as little as possible, that will damage the acceptance of politics and democracy.”