The unprecedented election chaos in Berlin kept the German media busy for weeks: In some cases, the ballot papers were simply missing in the federal elections in September 2021, then they again caused countless invalid votes because the ballot papers were distributed incorrectly. Some voters even stood in front of locked polling stations. But now the breakdowns in Berlin could still have a judicial aftermath.
According to the German online magazine “Tichys Insight”, the responsible election officials tried to deliberately cover up the chaos. The medium has the protocol for a polling station.
It’s about polling station 20512 in the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district. “For the second vote for the Berlin House of Representatives, the wrong ballot papers were available in the election office – namely those for Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf,” reports “Tichys Insight”. “In Berlin, elections are based on both the state and district lists – in this respect, the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf ballot paper shows different candidates than the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg ballot paper. Anyone who ticked off a party’s list voted for the list of candidates from the neighboring constituency. It’s already an absurd process.”
But that’s not all: The electoral board in the responsible election office quickly noticed that the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district had a list for the neighboring constituency, as can be seen from the minutes. But instead of intervening, the election simply continued with false ballots. The record says: “From there came the instruction to continue with the election with the wrong ballot papers”.
But it gets even better. The protocol also says: “About 2 hours later we received the information that the ‘Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf’ ballot papers are to be treated as invalid. By then, 82 people had used these ballots.” This means: “Almost every fifth vote cast in this polling station was declared invalid!” reports “Tichys Insight”. This should not be an isolated case: “Since wrong ballot papers were obviously displayed in many polling stations and the votes cast were subsequently declared invalid, the error multiplies.”
The online media will examine the 40,000-page log to determine how many times voters were cheated of their vote. In the affected district alone, it is estimated that around tens of thousands of voters were deceived. But “Tichy’s Insight” estimates that the scale of voter deception is much greater. This procedure would then have had a system. Chaos, then, was followed by deliberate deception on a large scale.
Marcel Luthe, candidate for the House of Representatives, has already filed criminal charges against those responsible at the district electoral office as a result of the revelations. “In my opinion, 80 people were deliberately deprived of their right to vote here – and that should only be the tip of the iceberg!” he explains.
In the ad, he speaks of “criminal election fraud by causing an ‘other incorrect result’ within the meaning of Section 107a of the Criminal Code”. This procedure led to a “wrong result of an election” because the will of the voters was not implemented. Because it’s not about anonymous lists, but about specific people in the order of the list – from another place.
Three days after the election, the matter took another “remarkable turn”: “While the ballot papers in question were declared invalid by the election board in consultation with the electoral office on election night, three days later parts of them were apparently declared valid votes again. Invalid ballot papers first became valid votes, these were declared invalid and later valid votes on invalid ballot papers again.”
The editor Roland Tichy emphasizes: “It is a process of arbitrariness unknown in the history of Germany, how the most sacred good of democracy is dealt with – the vote.”
