The German Bundestag election control commission’s decided “no” on Dec. 18 to recounting votes in the February early election, which the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) had demanded, because it blames counting irregularities for keeping it short of the 10,000 votes required to enter the Bundestag. The vast majority of the parliament’s plenary voted in favor of the commission’s position. Only AfD MP Fabian Jacobi spoke out against the majority; questioning whether the present government is even legitimately in office: “It damages the stability of the state and the reputation of democracy if these doubts are not dispelled,” he insisted.
BSW party leader Fabio de Masi reiterated in reaction to the “no,” that the party had “documented numerous counting errors in an extremely close election result.” State election officials had “themselves admitted that the anomalies we documented were highly likely to be miscounts to the detriment of BSW, but these were not further investigated,” he said. De Masi recalled that in 1991, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled “that in such a constellation, a complete recount must be carried out.” BSW will file a legal complaint at the Constitutional Court now, for a ruling in favor of a recount. It is interesting to note that the AfD supports the BSW case, whereas all other parties reject it.
