Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) has officially filed an election complaint with Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court, challenging last year’s Bundestag results. The party narrowly missed the 5% threshold with 4.981% of votes and claims that systematic counting errors deprived it of representation.
According to the 177-page complaint, supported by eight affidavits, voters reported casting ballots for BSW that were instead recorded for the similarly named conservative party, Bündnis Deutschland (BD), which appeared directly above BSW on the ballot. Party leader Amira Mohamed Ali told Stern that the “official final result is wrong.”
The party estimates that only 9,529 additional votes would have secured its entry into the Bundestag.
BSW previously failed in December to prompt a recount through the Bundestag itself, a procedure criticized by party founder Sahra Wagenknecht as reminiscent of a “banana republic.” Electoral law experts note that proving systematic errors requires a recount, which makes the chances of success uncertain.
If a recount were to overturn the result, the political implications would be significant. The current CDU/CSU–SPD coalition holds a slim majority, achieved partly because both BSW and the liberal FDP failed to cross the 5% hurdle.
