Berlin, September 10th, 2026 (The Berlin Spectator) – Berlin’s state election authorities have confirmed a mistake in the mailing of postal ballots ahead of the Berlin House of Representatives election scheduled for September 20th. In the district of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, some voters received ballot papers meant for a different constituency.
State Returning Officer Stephan Bröchler announced the error on Wednesday. It affects postal ballots for constituencies 3 and 4, which were issued on August 24th and 25th. Constituency 3 stretches from Spandauer Damm and Schlossstrasse in the north through Lietzenseepark to Adenauerplatz and Kurfürstendamm in the south. Constituency 4 runs from Otto-Suhr-Allee and the Spree riverbank in the north across Strasse des 17. Juni and Savignyplatz to Lietzenburger Strasse and Düsseldorfer Strasse in the south.
So far, six confirmed cases have surfaced in which postal voters received ballot papers from the wrong constituency during the envelope stuffing process, as German-language publications reported.
Human Error
Bröchler said he takes the matter very seriously. He noted that human error can never be fully ruled out in any election, and that the priority now is fixing the mistake as thoroughly as possible. Votes cast using the wrong ballot papers would be invalid.
To correct the problem, the district election office plans to contact around 1,400 eligible voters who could potentially be affected. Anyone who received the wrong ballot papers, or who is unsure, can reach out to the election office and receive new postal voting documents. According to the state election office, the flawed ballot paper already submitted becomes invalid once replaced, double voting is ruled out, and ballot secrecy remains protected.
Governing Mayor Kai Wegner of the CDU thanked Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf’s district mayor Kirstin Bauch of the Greens for acting quickly. In a statement released by the Berlin Senate Chancellery’s press office, Wegner said elections are the heart of German democracy and that every vote counts.
Core Responsibility
He added that every Berliner must be able to trust that elections in the city are conducted safely, fairly and accessibly, and thanked Bauch for making sure that happens. He said he expects the Senate Interior Administration and the State Returning Officer to work together to ensure the vote runs smoothly across the entire city, including in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, calling this a core responsibility of the state that Berlin owes its residents.
Not everyone is convinced a letter will be enough to fix things. Kian Niroomand of the SPD, the party’s direct candidate in the affected constituency 3, welcomed the fact that the error is being taken seriously but voiced concern about the burden placed on affected voters. He said those affected must notice the letter, correctly interpret the information it contains, and then take action themselves, either by obtaining the correct documents or by correcting a vote already cast.
Niroomand pointed out a particular problem: some affected voters may not even be in Berlin, for example because they are traveling, and a letter could easily go unnoticed. He said he has doubts that a letter alone to the roughly 1,400 affected voters will be sufficient. What matters in the end, he said, is that it can genuinely be ruled out that votes are invalidated because of a wrongly sent ballot paper.
Election Repeated
The election for the Berlin House of Representatives takes place on September 20th. Postal ballots can still be requested online through Tuesday, September 15th. From September 16th onward, voters must contact their local district election office directly.
On September 26th, 2021, multiple issues were registered during the last regular elections in Berlin. At some of Berlin’s 2,256 polling stations, voters did not get ballots. In others, they got the wrong ones, or ballots that were copied, which is against the rules too. Attempts to transport the right ballots to the right polling locations failed because of the Berlin Marathon which took place on the same day. Almost the entire city was blocked to motorized traffic. Because of those problems, the elections were repeated on February 12th, 2023.
Back then, officials said measures needed to be taken in order to make sure mistakes of this kind would never happen again.
