Four politicians from the AfD party, who were barred from participation in local municipal elections in Lower Saxony, have filed challenges questioning the validity of the September 13th elections, and in two instances, also the subsequent runoff elections held on September 27th.
Patrick Bauer, the spokesperson for the AfD state association in Lower Saxony, confirmed the filing of these appeals to “Die Welt.” Bauer stated that the next step in the legal process will be through the relevant council or district assembly; should that decision be unfavorable to the party, they plan to take the case to the administrative court. In all four cases, the AfD candidates were disqualified by the local election committees due to doubts surrounding their constitutional loyalty.
The affected politicians include Martin Sichert, an AfD member of the Bundestag, in the district of Friesland; Stephan Bothe, the deputy state chairman, in Lüneburg; Thorsten Moriße, the State Parliament representative, in Wilhelmshaven; and Justin Vogel, the Göttingen AfD district chairman, in Herzberg am Harz.
This exclusion stems from a new regulation introduced in the Lower Saxony election code during the spring. This regulation requires that candidates running for high elected offices, such as mayors and district administrators, must be verified for their constitutional loyalty if there is evidence that they cannot guarantee perpetual commitment to the liberal democratic basic order defined in the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany.
