DAccording to the Berlin Constitutional Court, the election to the Berlin House of Representatives must be repeated in its entirety. The court made this very clear in a public hearing on Wednesday. The President of the Berlin State Constitutional Court, Ludgera Selting, said that the realization of the right to vote by the citizens and a legal composition of the parliament are more important than the protection of the elected parliament.
Since thousands of citizens could not cast their votes or could not cast them effectively and the many electoral errors were documented only incompletely, “the integrity of the election results was significantly damaged”. This could also permanently damage the trust of the citizens in democracy. This can only be cured by repeating the full election in all constituencies. Only a partial rerun of the election could not restore Parliament’s legitimacy.
In her legal assessment, which lasted around 40 minutes, the President of the Constitutional Court left no doubt that the state election commissioner had violated their duty to prepare the elections in an appropriate manner. The preparation for the election was the first electoral error. It is part of the generality and equality of the election that citizens must be able to “cast complete valid votes under reasonable conditions”.
Copies of ballot papers considered valid
The state returning authority had “not calculated or incorrectly calculated” the election time per eligible voter. According to the calculations of the state returning authority, a maximum of 400 people could have voted in a polling booth. “The average number was 1000 people”, in the district of Pankow it was even 1500. The existing polling booths were only sufficient for “significantly less than 40 percent of those eligible to vote”. In addition, there were not enough ballot papers in five districts from the start.
In the election itself, thousands of citizens would not have been able to cast their votes or would not have been able to do so unaffected. In the district of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, for example, a “clear four-digit number” of votes were cast on copies of ballot papers because ballot papers were missing. They were considered valid, although that was not permissible.
In addition, there were waiting times of several hours in many polling stations, and a number of polling stations were temporarily closed. In addition, after 6 p.m. voting continued “across the board”, although forecasts had already been published. That was the case in 1,066 of 2,256 polling stations, so it affected “almost half of all polling stations,” said Selting.
“Election errors are relevant to the mandate”
According to the court, the electoral errors are also relevant to the mandate, i.e. they affect the distribution of seats in parliament. Influencing the distribution of seats does not have to be “mathematically concrete”, but it is enough if it is possible, said Selting. In total, the polling stations were closed for 83 hours. In addition, polling stations were still open a total of 350 hours after 6 p.m. It is not possible to find out how many eligible voters did not vote or voted after 6 p.m. due to queues and polling station closures.
The Constitutional Court therefore assumes that the mandate is relevant for all 78 constituencies and the first and second votes, since the concrete possibility of influencing the distribution of seats is sufficient for this. “The Constitutional Court is convinced that the documented voting errors are just the tip of the iceberg,” says Selting.
The state electoral office, the Senate’s internal administration and the state associations of the political parties “The Party” and the AfD were represented in the hearing. Today’s explanations were a preliminary legal assessment of the court, which will be discussed further after the hearing. The objecting parties will comment further.
