The Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, has received more than 800 appeals against the February 23 general election so far, according to the parliamentary administration.
This was much fewer than after the election in 2021 – when almost 2,200 complaints were filed – but still more than twice as much as the number following the vote in 2017.
About half of the latest appeals concerned the ability of Germans living abroad to take part in the February ballot.
Due to the early snap election, the deadlines for mail-in votes had to be shortened, leaving just two weeks between when those ballots could be sent out and the deadline by which they had to be back at the election commissions.
That meant the mail-in ballots from many Germans living in foreign countries did not make it back to Germany on time, so their votes could not be counted, according to many of the appeals.
The non-profit organisation Mehr Demokratie (More Democracy) had consequently urged affected citizens to file appeals against the election, maintaining that, for many Germans abroad, casting their vote had been “factually impossible”.
The left-wing Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) party has also announced it was appealing the election result.
The party of former Die Linke politician Sahra Wagenknecht had narrowly missed the 5 per cent hurdle necessary to enter parliament in the February election. According to the final count, BSW got 4.98 per cent of the vote.
It has claimed it only needed 9,000 more votes to gain access to the Bundestag and expected that it would get those if a recount was mandated. In mid-March, a BSW request for a recount was denied by the German Constitutional Court for “formalistic” reasons.
In most cases, appeals against a federal election have been unsuccessful, with the 2021 vote as a noteworthy exception.
That came after grave mismanagement of the ballot in Berlin became public – including missing voting slips, the provision of incorrect ballots and unduly long waiting times for people to cast their votes.
The Constitutional Court ruled that the election would have to be rerun in 455 of Berlin’s more than 2,000 constituencies. In the end, the re-election did not materially change the outcome of the vote.
The deadline to file a complaint against the 2025 election was set at April 23. The Bundestag’s election audit committee will then review the appeals and make a decision.
