The independent commission of experts on the election in Berlin will present its final report this Wednesday. According to Tagesspiegel information, the report has been completed and the results are now to be presented to the public. The Berlin Senate set up the independent expert commission last November in response to the numerous serious breakdowns in the House of Representatives and Bundestag elections.
The Interior Senator Andreas Geisel (SPD), who was responsible at the time, had announced that the commission should primarily examine the extent to which the state election law and the state electoral regulations in Berlin meet the requirements and what changes are necessary for the future. So the Commission does not assess the legality of the election. To this end, there are separate proceedings before the Election Review Committee of the German Bundestag and the Berlin Constitutional Court.
The commission was made up of top-class experts from administration and science. The work on the final report was coordinated by Stephan Broechler, Professor of Administrative Sciences at the Berlin School of Economics and Law (HWR). In addition to constitutional law experts, practitioners such as district councillors, district returning officers and electoral boards were also involved.
The results of the commission are eagerly awaited because the experts did not examine the legality of the elections, but their proposals will shed light on structural deficiencies in the organization of the Berlin elections. This in turn could also have an impact on the other ongoing proceedings.
Among other things, the experts examined how the dual structure of district and state returning officers works. Participants said that there was a great need for reform here. For example, the state election authority in Berlin has hardly any right of access and control over the district election authority. In the autumn elections, this meant that proposals from the state returning officers were ignored in individual districts.
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There were numerous glitches in the September 26 election. Among other things, some ballot papers were missing or had been mixed up, there were long queues in front of many polling stations, and some polling stations were still open after 6 p.m.
Not only was the House of Representatives elected on that day in Berlin, the citizens also cast their votes for the Bundestag and twelve district assemblies. They were also able to vote in a referendum on the expropriation of large housing companies. The Federal Returning Officer has called for the Bundestag election to be repeated in half of the Berlin constituencies.
