Berlin's state election officer Stefan Bröchler sits in the hearing room.
© dpa
Following the Federal Constitutional Court's ruling on the partial rerun of the Bundestag elections in Berlin, concrete preparations are now underway for the ballot on 11 February.
The election notifications will be sent out to all eligible voters from 2 January, as state election officer Stephan Bröchler told the German Press Agency. The documents contain information on the polling station and the option of postal voting. Bröchler assumes that around 550,000 Berliners will be able to vote in the partial repeat election. That would be just over a fifth of the number of eligible voters in the election on 26 September 2021, which was marked by glitches and errors.
Bröchler and his colleagues in the Berlin districts have been busy preparing for the new round of voting for some time now. Tuesday's judgement by the constitutional judges now gives them clarity, for example with regard to the required number of ballot papers, polling stations and polling assistants: according to the judgement, the Bundestag election must be repeated in 455 of Berlin's 2256 electoral districts as well as the corresponding postal voting districts.
As Bröchler explained, the twelve district electoral committees and the state electoral committee will discuss practical issues in Berlin on Wednesday. One concerns the ballot papers. In principle, the same parties and candidates will run in the partial repeat election as in 2021, although the ballot papers will have to take into account a change in the name of the former NPD party, which is now called Die Heimat. In addition, at least one candidate from 2021 has died in the meantime. He will be removed from the ballot paper.
Based on feedback from the districts so far, Bröchler assumes that there will be no problems in recruiting volunteer electoral assistants. He wants to discuss this with representatives of the districts on Thursday. In view of the number of constituencies now in question, it can be assumed that around 3,000 or slightly more electoral assistants will be needed. By way of comparison, around 42,000 electoral assistants were deployed for the complete re-run of the elections to the Berlin House of Representatives and the district assemblies on 12 February this year.