BSW lawsuit rejected: no new beginning according to the election bankruptcy!

BSW lawsuit rejected: no new beginning according to the election bankruptcy!

Karlsruhe, Deutschland - The Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) suffered a setback before the Federal Constitutional Court. On June 3, 2025, the court declared the two organizations of the party to be inadmissible on the right of the Bundestag. The reason for this was the inadequate presentation on the part of the BSW, how its right to equal opportunities could have been violated. Tagesspiegel reports of the background of this decision.

The BSW had just wrapped itself past the decisive five percent hurdle in the Bundestag election in February with 4.981 percent of the votes. After the election, the party doubted the results and argued that votes may have been incorrectly assigned or evaluated as invalid. In this context, they had requested legal remedies to achieve a new counting of the votes in the event of scarce results.

new counting and ballot order

In addition, BSW made a lawsuit regarding the order of the parties on the ballot papers in which she felt disadvantaged. The party criticized that there was no way to count when failing at the five percent hurdle and called for a specific regulation that did not equate with other smaller parties. However, the Federal Constitutional Court found that the BSW did not provide sufficient justification to underpin its possible disadvantage, as the mdr

The court also pointed out that the Bundestag had extensive freedom in the design of the right to vote and that the BSW could not convincingly demonstrate why the legislator would have been obliged to enact a new count. These problems can be seen in the context of the strict German voting law, which is regulated by the Federal Election Act

The German Bundestag voting law

The Bundestag voting law stipulates that voters can hand in two votes: one for a direct candidate and one for the state list of a party. The latter is crucial for the share of a party in the Bundestag mandates. The Federal Constitution stipulates that every choice must be general, immediate, free, the same and secret.

A central element of the right to vote is the blocking clause. In order to move into the Bundestag, parties must reach at least 5 percent of the second votes or win three direct mandates. This right to vote has been reformed several times since its first introduction, most recently in 2023. The latest judgments of the Federal Constitutional Court have also had a decisive influence on the regulations, with the Bundestag being chosen for an election period of four years.