The Saxony election is overshadowed by attempts at fraud. Individual ballot papers in Dresden are said to have been manipulated. An election committee has made a decision.
The Dresden district election committee has declared the approximately 100 manipulated ballot papers for the state election invalid. However, this will have little effect on the final election result, said Dresden election director Markus Blocher after the committee meeting in the New Town Hall. “The distribution of seats will not change.” Only the absolute numbers have been corrected.
A total of 111 suspicious postal ballot papers were found. All eight Dresden constituencies were affected, but especially constituency 40 in Langebrück in the north of the state capital. This includes electoral districts 36011 (29 ballot papers) and 36012 (56 ballot papers).
Manipulated crosses in Dresden for “Free Saxons”
After the state election, it became known that postal ballots in several Saxon constituencies had been manipulated in favor of the right-wing extremist micro-party Free Saxony. The Dresden Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Saxon State Criminal Police Office (LKA) are now investigating.
The district electoral committee checked all postal ballots with direct and list votes for the Free Saxony party, and random samples were taken of those with a vote for the party. Blocher said they had expected to find 112 manipulated ballots. In the end, there were 111. “We took a closer look at one of them and couldn’t find any stickers or anything else.”
Blocher said it was regrettable that the votes were now invalid. However, after consulting with legal counsel, a majority in the committee saw no legal basis for declaring the original votes valid.
Source: Stern
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