Wowing to numerous glitches and irregularities in the voting, Federal Returning Officer Georg Thiel considers a partial repetition of the Bundestag elections in Berlin to be unavoidable. In November, he had already lodged an objection to the way the election was scored in six of Berlin’s twelve constituencies.
On the day of the election last September, it was not only individual errors that happened as outliers, said Thiel on Tuesday at a hearing in the Bundestag’s election examination committee. Rather, it seems to have been a “complete systematic failure of the electoral organization”. In the end, the Bundestag decides on a possible re-election.
The elections to the Bundestag and the Berlin House of Representatives on September 26 were marked by numerous mishaps and organizational problems. These included wrong or missing ballot papers, the temporary closure of polling stations and long queues in front of them. In addition, some polling stations were open well after 6 p.m.
Against this background, the Federal Returning Officer had already lodged an objection against the evaluation of the election in six Berlin constituencies in November. It cannot be ruled out that the events will have an impact on the distribution of seats in the new Bundestag. The Election Review Committee has been investigating for some time whether this is actually the case and whether the election must be repeated at least in certain constituencies or districts.
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