By Stephen Peter
Berlin is about to repeat the federal elections – the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe negotiated this on Tuesday. State Returning Officer Stephan Bröchler (61) made a request: The re-election should not be carried out during the Advent season!
Berlin’s election boss is worried that there won’t be enough election workers in the period before Christmas or around the turn of the year. The presiding judge Doris König (66) expressed understanding for Bröchler’s concerns: The court will try to take this into account in the principle of accelerating the procedure.
At 10 a.m. sharp, the 2nd Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court met. Two days of negotiations were actually scheduled, but Germany’s top judges were apparently in a hurry – they questioned everyone involved so intensively that the hearing on Wednesday can be omitted.
There was a lunch break from 1:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m., and the hearing did not end until just before 7:00 p.m. Optimism afterwards in the SPD: “I’m in good spirits that the constitutional court will follow our arguments and that there will only be new elections where there were major problems on election day,” said Johannes Fechner (50), parliamentary director of the SPD parliamentary group BZ
The traffic light coalition in the federal government wants a repeat election in only 431 polling stations. The CDU, however, in over 1200 polling stations. With her lawsuit, she wants to ensure that new elections have to be held in the entire capital – the election glitches were too big.
But the SPD believes it has heard from the way the judges put the question that the constitutional court will not agree to this lawsuit. Other representatives of the traffic light coalition have also gained this impression. However, it remains a guess, since the judges don’t let themselves be looked at.
The constitutional judges reprimanded the election examination committee of the Bundestag because it had not gone through all the protocols of the election workers before the hearing. It’s about 40,000 pages!
In 1713, objections were raised to the Bundestag against the Bundestag elections in the state of Berlin, one of them by the then Federal Returning Officer Georg Thiel (66). Judge Peter Müller pointed out that there were around eight times as many objections as in previous elections. A “previously unknown number”. The electoral errors could have led to people not exercising their right to vote.
The sides gave different ratings to the question of whether waiting times of half an hour or more were election errors. The new Federal Returning Officer Ruth Brand (56) sees it this way: photos and videos of queues on Twitter or Facebook could have deterred other people from voting.
A verdict is expected in September – then the Berliners could make their crosses again at the end of October.