Germany to Rerun Part of 2021 Vote to Ensure Election Integrity

  • Irregularities in voting process marred the national ballot
  • Scholz’s governing coalition holds wide majority in parliament
A voter casts his ballot at a polling station during federal parliamentary elections in Berlin, Germany, on Sunday, Sept. 26, 2021. German voters are heading to the polls Sunday in a watershed election to decide who will follow Angela Merkel as leader of Europe’s biggest economy.Photographer: Liesa Johannssen-Koppitz/Bloomberg
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German lawmakers cleared a rerun of last year’s national election in six parliamentary districts in Berlin after irregularities at hundreds of the capital’s polling stations triggered official complaints.

The plan, which was backed by Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s governing coalition but is likely to face constitutional challenges in court, provides an unusual postscript to the Sept. 26, 2021, election. Scholz’s government has a 96-seat majority in the lower house, or Bundestag, which voted 374 to 252 in favor of the rerun late Thursday.