How Screwed-Up Was the September Election in Berlin?

 Well....it's reached the point that a legal case is proceeding....(RBB reports the basic facts)....to the state Constitutional Court.

General story?  A  national election occurred in September of 2021.  Berlin seemed to have issues.

Statements have been made over the 2,257 polling stations for the city, and the judges will have to evaluate the 'mess'.

Lack of ballots at certain stations?  Well....this gets brought up and there were a number of polling stations that simply didn't have the allocation of ballots as you'd think. 

Remember, in Germany....as you move from apartment to apartment....you re-register at the city hall....so everyone is in effect....registered to vote.  If they say in this one district that there are 3,211 'citizens'.....there should be 3,211 ballots on hand, even if only 60-percent show up.

But they had this other odd problem for the day.....it was also a marathon day in the city....so traffic was tied up in various ways.

The story of some polling sites shut down for two hours because they ran out of ballots?  This comes up, and begs questions.

The story of 250-odd polling sites still open after 6:30 PM (mandated time to shut down)?  Yeah, this is a major problem that begs questions as well.

Allowing 16-year olds to vote in a federal election?  Various cases are noted, and illegal.....you can vote as a 16-year old in local elections....NOT federal elections.  This begs questions.

The voting assistants involved? Well.....this gets interesting because they were given status as a volunteer.....getting the Covid shot earlier than regular people.  So when the election training stuff came up.....a lot of these workers just said 'no'....they refused to be a voting assistant.  

So, what'll happen here with the court?  It's possible in several districts that the vote will be thrown out, but this decision won't occur until 18 months after the election.

There are six Berlin neighborhoods in this 'threat' area where the vote might be cancelled on results.

Affecting the national results?  I doubt that it matters that much.  No one says the numbers but I seriously doubt that it affected more than 10,000 voters.  These are people who likely stood there for 90 minutes at a closed station (no ballots) and just gave up....walking over for a beer or heading home.  Course, no one has said much on the 16-year old voting problem.  There might have been 10,000 of them in the mix as well, and their vote shouldn't count.  

The curious thing to me?  We are eight  months past the election, and just now reaching the court 'path'.