AfD fails with complaints about Bremen's citizenship election
The AfD is not represented in the Bremen Citizens' Assembly. Prior to last year's elections, it submitted two candidate lists to the electoral committee - and was not allowed to run at all. The far-right party has been unsuccessful in its legal challenges.
The Bremen Citizens' Assembly election from last year does not need to be repeated. The Bremen State Constitutional Court rejected complaints from the AfD against the election. The AfD was not allowed to participate in the Citizens' Assembly election because it had two competing candidate lists due to internal party disputes.
After the AfD state party conference in 2022, a dispute arose over the validity of the board elections. The party's state arbitration court eventually declared the votes invalid and appointed an emergency board - a decision later confirmed by the AfD federal arbitration court. However, there was also the board that emerged from the elections at the party conference, the so-calledrump board. Both boards submitted a candidate list for Bremen.
The state electoral committee did not allow these. Therefore, the AfD did not participate in the election. The AfD state association and individual candidates from Bremen and Bremerhaven went to court to declare the election invalid.
In December, the Bremen electoral review court had already rejected objections against the Citizens' Assembly election. Now, the State Constitutional Court - the constitutional court of the state - has also ruled against the AfD. No election errors were recognizable, said the presiding judge Peter Sperlich in the reasoning of the judgment. The electoral committee and the electoral review court had rightly established that the election proposals for both Bremen and Bremerhaven were invalid.
The mandatory signatures of the state board were missing. Each party can only submit one election proposal, explained the court. The rule that this is only valid with the signature of the state board serves legitimate purposes.
The SPD emerged as the winner of the election in May 2023. Together with the Greens and the Left, it governs in Bremen.
Despite the AfD's legal challenges, the Bremen State Constitutional Court upheld the decision of the electoral committee and rejected their complaints, stating that no election errors were recognizable. Thus, The Commission, being the state electoral committee, correctly established that the AfD's election proposals for both Bremen and Bremerhaven were invalid due to missing mandatory signatures from the state board, allowing only one valid proposal per party.
