According to the preliminary assessment of the Berlin Constitutional Court, politicians in the capital must prepare for a complete repetition of the elections to the House of Representatives. A verdict is not yet available and President Ludgera Selting emphasized several times during the oral hearing on Wednesday that the court was discussing the arguments presented. But in politics, the preparations have already started.
CDU General Secretary Mario Czaja has already promised support for the Berlin Christian Democrats. “Our federal chairman Friedrich Merz and I will help the candidates of the Berlin CDU to win this election,” Czaja told the “Tagesspiegel” on Wednesday. “The chances are good that the Christian Democrats will conquer all of Berlin – especially since the parties of the red-green-red coalition are responsible for the election chaos in 2021,” said Czaja.
CDU General Secretary: “Governing Mayor on call”
Berlin’s AfD parliamentary group leader Kristin Brinker expects a complete repetition of the House of Representatives elections next spring. “I would be surprised if the court found another way out,” Brinker said on the sidelines of the hearing. CDU General Secretary Stefan Evers also said that Berlin must now prepare for complete new elections. “As of today, Franziska Giffey is a governing mayor on call,” he said, referring to the SPD head of government.
The Berlin Constitutional Court had negotiated for around seven hours on Wednesday about complaints from the state electoral authority, the internal administration and the AfD and Die Party parties against the election on September 26, 2021. During the preparation and conduct of the election, there were a large number of serious electoral errors, said Court President Selting. According to a preliminary assessment, these were relevant to the mandate – according to the court, they therefore had an impact on the composition of Parliament and the distribution of mandates. The state returning authority and the Senate are responsible.
The constitutional and administrative lawyer Christian Pestalozza was surprised by the preliminary assessment of the court, according to which the election must be completely repeated. “The extent of a repeat election must be in proportion to the election errors,” said the professor from the Free University of Berlin to the German Press Agency. “You can’t make new elections across the board if the election was largely error-free.”
The Constitutional Court apparently says: “We want to make a clean sweep,” says Pestalozza. From his point of view, however, this is problematic. “You can’t have a larger number of new elections based on assumptions than is really necessary. That’s not possible.” Voting errors must be established without a doubt, then the relevance of the mandate must be checked. He hopes that the court will reflect again after the preliminary assessment presented on Wednesday.
Decision in November or December
The court has received a total of 35 objections to the election. It was initially unclear when the court intends to deliver its verdict. According to the law, the judges have three months after the hearing, i.e. until the end of the year. In the political arena, their decision is expected in November or December.
There have already been calls for the SPD politician Andreas Geisel to resign as Senator, who was Interior Senator at the time of the election in September 2021 and is now at the head of the Senate Department for Urban Development and Building.
“He should avert further damage to the reputation of the Senate by resigning immediately,” said Berlin’s FDP head of state Christoph Meyer. CDU General Secretary Evers also believes that resignation is inevitable. “Anyone who shakes confidence in elections endangers our democracy. I think it’s terrible that neither the SPD nor Senator Geisel, who is responsible for the election chaos, have taken any action.”
Geisel refuses to resign. “It’s not that I don’t feel responsible, but the question is what decision do you make to make things better, and I’ve decided to work,” he said on Wednesday evening at a readers’ forum for the “Berliner Morgenpost”. . “I was a candidate myself and shouldn’t have intervened,” emphasized Geisel and asked: “What would it do better if I resigned?” He has a task in Berlin, which consists of developing the city and building apartments. “And when I examine myself and ask myself: Did you organize the election, then I say: No, you didn’t organize the election. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have to make sure that it never happens again.”
