Abstract

The scrutiny of elections as a task of Parliamentary Administration? – Functional Adequacy as a Requirement for Institutional Reform Proposals

The electoral scrutiny procedure has recently received a lot of attention by the (professional) public due to the events on the election day of 26 September 2021 in Berlin and the subsequent legal dispute on the validity of the federal election as well as the election of the Berlin House of Representatives and the district representatives’ assemblies. The diverging results of the parallel electoral scrutiny procedures before the Berlin Constitutional Court with regard to the elections of the Berlin House of Representatives and the district representatives’ assemblies on the one hand, and at the Federal Parliament with regard to the federal election in Berlin on the other, have prompted calls for an abolition of the first stage of the electoral scrutiny procedure in the form of the Federal Parliament’s right to self-scrutiny. It is hoped that the abolition of the two-stage procedure will speed up the scrutiny of elections. The self-scrutiny of elections by the Parliament, which was won from the crown in the age of early constitutionalism, is no longer considered to be in keeping with the times, and an exclusive jurisdiction of constitutional courts is advocated in this respect. The reform proposals do not take account of the significant filtering function of the parliamentary scrutiny of elections that is provided by the parliamentary administration, especially with regard to the required examination of the facts. Hopes for a speeding up of procedures appear illusory. Aspects of functional adequacy would speak more in favor of an optimization of the parliamentary scrutiny procedure.