Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court has dismissed several requests by the left-wing Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) party and its members who were seeking a recount of the votes in Germany’s general election of February 23.
The decision was published late on March 13.
The party had narrowly missed the 5 per cent hurdle to make it into the Bundestag by 0.028 percentage points or about 13,400 votes.
On March 11, it had demanded that the court postpone the certification of the election result. BSW’s ultimate goal was to have all votes recounted.
The constitutional court’s argument was largely formalistic. The Second Senate of the court based in Karlsruhe (Baden-Wurttemberg) said: “Just as before the election, legal protection in relation to this election is only possible to a limited extent before the final election result is determined. In particular, legal protection against any counting errors is reserved for the objection to the election and the election review procedure, without this entailing unreasonable disadvantages.”
The final result was determined and certified on March 14.
While BSW received around 4,200 more votes than in the preliminary result, the party was still 9,500 short of crossing the 5 per cent hurdle.
It can now lodge an objection against the final result with the Bundestag. Wagenknecht had already announced that BSW will take that path should the legal challenge at the Constitutional Court fail.
In its legal challenges, BSW had argued that recounts in several municipalities had shown that votes for the party had been miscounted or deemed invalid.
Wagenknecht had previously claimed the party had already been allotted several thousand extra votes, narrowing the difference to the 5 per cent threshold down to below 10,000 votes.
“There is a very realistic chance that BSW has actually surpassed the hurdle”, Wagenknecht had said in demanding a general recount of all almost 50 million votes cast.
If BSW were to enter German parliament after all, it would mean that the two-party coalition between Conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Social Democratic Party (SPD) currently being negotiated would not have a majority.
That would mean CDU leader Friedrich Merz would have to form a three-party coalition that might potentially have to include The Greens party.
