Berlin election debacle: Top court orders partial rerun of 2021 poll

The German capital Berlin will have to rerun part of its botched 2021 elections for the national parliament, the country's Constitutional Court ruled on Tuesday.

The election will have to be repeated in 455 electoral districts and the corresponding postal voting districts, presiding judge Doris König said. This would amount to about a fifth of the city's 2,256 constituencies.

Long queues and incorrect or missing paper ballots marred the September 26, 2021 election in Berlin, in a major embarrassment for the city.

The Berlin Marathon was held on the same day, contributing to the chaos and making it more difficult for officials to deliver replacement ballots to voting locations.

The chaotic poll resulted in some 1,713 formal complaints - about eight times as many as in previous votes.

A rerun of the 2021 municipal elections - also held that same day - resulted in a change of mayor earlier this year.

The man who benefited most from that repeated vote, Berlin's conservative Mayor Kai Wegner, said the rerun ordered by the court on Tuesday would require a "major effort" from the city authorities.

He had full confidence in the city's top electoral official, Stephan Bröchler, he said, and said he expected the vote would run smoothly.

"The Berlin Senate has worked with him to create all the necessary conditions for elections in Berlin to function again," Wegner said. "In a functioning city, elections must take place properly."

In making its decision on Tuesday, the highest German court checked for electoral errors that could have an influence on the distribution of seats in the national parliament.

It came to conclusion that such errors were present in 31 constituencies more than were declared in a decision by the Bundestag in 2022. The conservative opposition then asked the Constitutional Court to review the elections again, leading to Tuesday's ruling.

The latest possible date for the polls is February 11, but a date has not yet been set.