Landtagswahl: Gedränge im Wahllokal? Rechte aktivieren gezielt Beobachter

On Sunday, shortly after 6 PM, the ballot boxes in Saxony-Anhalt will be emptied. In around 2,600 polling stations, the counting of ballot papers will commence. In some areas, there could be congestion, as the AfD has been urging their supporters for weeks to closely monitor the election administrators at night – a right every citizen has without prior registration, unless they cause a disturbance.

The AfD aims to secure "hard-fought patriotic votes" as part of their electoral strategy. At many AfD events, a man in a bright blue suit has been roaming around, collecting names of individuals who wish to position themselves as observers in the polling stations. Recently, AfD's top candidate Ulrich Siegmund has also called for people to "look closely" and, like AfD's federal chairman Tino Chrupalla, speculated that there might be wrongdoing in postal voting.

Flanked by the right-wing network Ein Prozent, which has even set up an interactive "Election Observer Map" this week allowing volunteers to register, the AfD's appeal is to cover as many polling stations as possible. By Tuesday, hundreds of people had already registered in dozens of electoral districts. The homepage states: "Hard-fought patriotic votes must not disappear!"

The platform warns against overreacting to heightened political emotions and the influence of left-wing to far-left NGO campaigns that may convince individuals to attempt to correct an election result themselves. The nationwide active association, based in Saxony, opposes migration and the admission of asylum seekers and is strongly connected to the "New Right".

The Saxony regional association also spread the interactive map of Ein Prozent on the X platform and called for participation. Platform Wahlen, with more than 90 observers, announces its presence in Sachsen-Anhalt with over 80 short-term and 12 long-term observers, presenting itself as an "independent election evaluation mission according to international standards", such as those of the Council of Europe and OECD.

The report by the mostly voluntary helpers is to be presented the day after the election. Platform Wahlen believes civil society election observation is a "countermeasure to election-related conspiracy theories and attempts to defame elections and democracy in general". The platform's poor preparation and subsequent repetition of the last Bundestag election in Berlin have left many voters disappointed and doubtful about the effectiveness of the voting processes.

The Ein-Prozent-Kampagne has even prepared a guide for their volunteer election observers, urging them not to fabricate errors but to remain vigilant for potential issues that could cost the five to nine votes ordered by the community level election administrators. If suspiciously many invalid votes are found, the platform advises requesting a recount.

Detailed rules regarding the procedure can be found in the Landeswahlordnung and a Implementation Order for the state election, stating that during the entire election process, including the verification and determination of the election result until the announcement of the election result, everyone has access to the polling station, unless it disturbs the election proceedings.

The election administrator is responsible for maintaining order in the polling station, assigning access to the polling station if there is congestion. The election administrator is also asked to inform the communities about sensitizing election administrators to critical observers: "We ask for the guarantee of the public nature of the election process and the results' counting during the training of election administrators."