🇩🇪 German elections (federal & EU level)

[Antonio the Sixth]

My precinct in Saarbrücken Center voted like this:

Proportional vote:
SPD: 31.7 (+13.2)
Linke: 23.2 (+2.8)
FDP: 14.0 (+3.5)
CDU: 12.0 (-9.9)
AfD: 3.5 (-1.3)
Greens: did not run (-18.1)

District vote:
Josefine Ortleb (SPD): 33.4 (+4.8)
Gerhard Wenz (Greens): 22.2 (+7.5)
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (CDU): 16.4 (-10.2)
Mark Baumeister (Linke): 10.0 (-8.0)
Helmut Isringhaus (FDP): 7.4 (+1.7)
Boris Huebner (AfD): 2.8 (-1.4)

The Green supporters in my precinct did some heavy ticket splitting, especially for Linke, but also for FDP and SPD to lesser extent. Numbers for minor parties aren't out yet.

How can Greens "not run" in the proportional list vote? Did they just abandon the entire state?

[Antonio the Sixth]

Holy sh*t wow. Honestly, I'm not a fan of the Greens, but they're not the ones at fault here.

It's utterly f**ked up that the Courts actually threw out the entire party list because of this. There's a place to regulate party democracy, but this is ludicrous and the remedy is infinitely worse than the original harm. This is disenfranchisement plain and simple.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Holy sh*t wow. Honestly, I'm not a fan of the Greens, but they're not the ones at fault here.

It's utterly f**ked up that the Courts actually threw out the entire party list because of this. There's a place to regulate party democracy, but this is ludicrous and the remedy is infinitely worse than the original harm. This is disenfranchisement plain and simple.

No, it is 100 % the Greens' fault.

The Greens planned their nomination convention way too late. Other parties had their lists elected in May or April already, while the Greens organized the first convention for end of June, barely 4 weeks ahead of the filing deadline, that had been known for months.

Intra-party filings against election of the delegates of abovementioned local party were done in May, freshly after the supporters of the shady guy had taken all delegate spots. The Green intra-party arbitration court (It is a judicial instance within the Greens, that all parties are forced to have according to law) just did not care to resolve this matter until one day ahead of the second convention (which was 2 days before the filing deadline). If the intra-party arbitration court had ruled that the delegate election was invalid in June or so, there would've been enough time to elect new delegates.

There are rules on how parties have to be run and how intra-party elections have to take place in German law. Any intra-party elections have to respect democratic principles, like the possibility of participating in intra-party procedures for all members within the respective area (town, state etc.). The Green intra-party arbitration court (remember: basically the party itself) ruled the first invalid since few non-delegates voted which they were not allowed to, but Electoral Committees have some degree of freedom to permit lists when such violation of democratic principles did not change the outcome. In this case, it was clear that the outcome of the second nomination process could have been changed due to the exclusion of that many delegates.

The state parties have a large degree of autonomy, but already back in 1999 (I wasn't even born yet), there were reports about mafia-like structures within the party surrounding this guy. His local party has had over 700 members in a town with a population of 37,000 - In comparison, local parties in cities with a population over 1 million like Cologne had less members at that time. The federal party just let him do his thing and never checked membership lists, and there were several warning signs. This ticking time bomb exploded at the worst time for the Greens.

That's fair. Thanks for the further explanation. It feels a bit strange that parties are so micromanaged in Germany, but I guess there are obvious historical reasons why they'd want it that way.