AfD raises allegations: election fraud in Bad Freienwalde?

AfD raises allegations: election fraud in Bad Freienwalde?

The situation surrounding the mayoral election in Bad Freienwalde is polarizing people's minds. AfD member of the state parliament Lars Günther has filed a criminal complaint alleging electoral irregularities after the election on October 19th produced an exciting, close result. While the CDU candidate Ulrike Heidemann won with 51.6 percent of the votes, the AfD candidate Frank Vettel got 48.4 percent, which corresponds to a difference of only around 160 votes. This election defeat prompted Günther to involve the public prosecutor's office in Frankfurt (Oder) and request that all election documents be secured maz-online.de reported.

Shortly after the election, the AfD announced that it would contest the results and is calling for the election to be repeated. At the center of the allegations are 401 postal voters who received duplicate voting documents. In this context, the city administration informed the affected voters that the incorrect documents sent were invalid and that new voting slips had been issued. The AfD state chairman René Springer described the double mailing as a “political scandal” and an attack on trust in democracy, while the election management classified the election as “clean” despite the irregularities.

Election observations and mistrust

Shortly before the state elections in Brandenburg, the AfD launched a call for election observation on Facebook, in which it praised “indispensable tools” for detecting “problems, fraud or errors”. The actions, which involved sharing a podcast about voter fraud and links to the far-right group “One Percent,” are intended to stoke distrust in the democratic process dw.com determines. However, officials emphasize that there is no evidence of manipulation and that postal voting is secure.

The allegations are part of a broader trend that can also be observed in other right-wing populist parties. The FPÖ in Austria, for example, is calling on voters to go to the polling station in person and criticizing postal voting as susceptible to fraud. American politicians such as Donald Trump have also circulated similar narratives about election fraud. Scientists Daniel Hellmann and Aiko Wagner warned that these safety nets often contain a kernel of truth that is used to spread distrust in the political system.

Former mayor Ralf Lehmann was calm about the election challenge and ruled out double voting. It remains to be seen whether and how the allegations will affect the political landscape in Bad Freienwalde. Many are asking themselves: Is trust in democracy really at risk here, or is it just another chapter in an already turbulent political climate?