AfD politician counted votes despite her own candidacy - lodged an objection to local elections

After an AfD politician counted votes in the local elections despite her own candidacy, a councilor lodged an objection. This was confirmed by a spokeswoman for the affected town of Buchholz in Nordheide. The objection is therefore directed against the election of the city council and the Trelde local council.

According to the information, the councilor also plans to lodge an objection with the district administration against the election of the district council and against the mayoral runoff election. For the latter, however, we first have to wait for the runoff election on Sunday. According to the city, the objections should then be dealt with in the respective committees after they have been constituted. This will not be possible in the city council until November 9th at the earliest. There have been no further election objections so far.

In the local elections around a week and a half ago, an AfD politician was active as an election worker, even though she was running for the district council, the city council and the local council. After her candidacy became known, she only counted the votes for the mayoral election and handed out ballot papers. It is not known exactly how the conflict of interest came to light. According to the state election authorities, the politician did not point this out herself.

State election authority: Validity of the election is not in question

According to the state election authorities, the politician should not have been allowed to count. According to the information, the background is a so-called protective regulation that is intended to prevent the influence of election results in which election workers themselves are candidates. However, this conflict of interest did not exist in the mayoral election. According to the state election management, there is no evidence of influence on the election results of the local parliaments. “There are no doubts about the accuracy of these election results.”

There was initially no statement from the politician or her AfD city association.