Berlin holds court-ordered rerun of state election

The city of Berlin on Sunday holds a court-ordered rerun of a chaotic 2021 state election that was marred by severe glitches.

During the initial vote, voters formed massive queues outside many polling stations, some of which ran out of ballot papers or received papers for the wrong district. Berlin residents who arrived to cast their ballots in the district of Charlottenburg expressed their surprise at the vote needing to be repeated in a country that is normally so organised.

Franziska Giffey, who belongs to Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats, was elected Berlin’s new mayor in 2021, and has been leading the city in a three-party left-wing governing coalition. Around 2.4 million people are eligible to vote in the rerun, according to the German news agency dpa.