BSW complains before the Federal Constitutional Court on a new choice of choice

The alliance Sahra Wagenknecht moves to the Federal Constitutional Court after the narrowly missed move into the Bundestag in order to achieve a new count of the votes.

A BSW spokeswoman confirmed the dpa news agency a corresponding report by the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”. The application was submitted in Karlsruhe today, she said. The Federal Constitutional Court confirmed the dpa to the receipt of a corresponding constitutional complaint with a request for issuing an interim order. According to the BSW, the BSW plans further complaints during the week.

After the preliminary end result in the Bundestag election on February 23, the BSW received around 4.972 percent of the vote nationwide and thus narrowly failed to enter parliament. According to the party, around 13,400 votes were missing. Since then, individual recovery has shown in several places that some votes were apparently assigned incorrectly. However, large shifts in the voting relationships were not known.

Party founder Sahra Wagenknecht spoke in the “FAZ” of “a few thousand BSW votes”, which were apparently incorrectly assigned to other parties or evaluated as invalid. “The respect for the voters requires to check and correct possible errors in detail,” said the BSW boss. This only works “if a nationwide new count is made before the official end result is determined”.

For the party, which was only founded in early 2024, the move into the Bundestag is politically important. However, the majority in parliament could also be affected: If the BSW is successful and still come to the Bundestag, a two-person coalition from the Union and the SPD may no longer have a majority.

Wagenknecht said that a party may only fail because of the five percent hurdle if it could be excluded that it was chosen by five percent of the voters. Already now “relatively large number of mistakes” had to be corrected on the basis of the party’s indications, said Wagenknecht.

The BSW refers to a new count in twelve Berlin polling stations, in which two additional BSW votes were found. “Extrapolated to all polling stations, the BSW would be a deviation in the Bundestag,” said Wagenknecht. Her spokeswoman added that, according to the party, there was “a realistic opportunity that we will exceed the five percent hurdle in a nationwide new count”.

The official end result will be announced by the Federal Election Committee next Friday. According to this, an objection could be raised and, if necessary, complained.

The BSW is represented, among other things, by the constitutional lawyer Christoph Degenhart. He told the “FAZ”: “The extremely narrow election outcome at the expense of the BSW makes a comprehensive review of the election process even before the official end result is determined. Otherwise, legal losses, a weakening of democratic legitimation and the disregard of voter will.”

The constitutional lawyer Uwe Lipinski, also active for the BSW, added: “If no urgent protection would be granted, a correction of the election result in the middle of the new election period would be highly likely, at the latest as part of an election examination complaint with the Federal Constitutional Court.”

Note: This article has been updated and further information was added.