The mayoral election must be repeated because the mayor of the Lower Saxony spa town of Bad Gandersheim violated the neutrality requirement during the election campaign and may have had a decisive influence on the election result as a result. This has now been decided by the Higher Administrative Court of Lower Saxony and confirmed the judgement of the Administrative Court (Ref.: 10 LA 84/24 of 16.09.2024).

Five weeks before the election, the mayor had organised „talks over the garden fence“ in 15 villages, in which she had reported on the successful implementation of projects with media support. In doing so, she had violated the strict duty of neutrality that applies to municipal officials during election campaigns. „This behaviour by the mayor, which was inadmissible in an election campaign, did not merely have an insignificant influence on the result of the election,“ the court found. It was sufficient for this that there had been a „concrete possibility“ of influencing voters. The unprovoked nature of the conversations, the number of conversations covered by the media, the localised topics and the proximity to the election date were important indicators in this context. „During election campaigns, municipal officials must pay close attention to how they report on their previous term of office and strictly observe the duty of neutrality,“ says Rechtsanwalt Dr Dominik Lück.

The contact person for all questions regarding the right to vote in our practice is Rechtsanwalt Dr. Dominik Lück.