Although German lawyer Reiner Fuellmich acquired not nearly enough votes to secure a seat in the German parliament, given the fact that he has been kept on remand for 16 months and was not allowed to campaign, becoming ninth[i] out of 19 candidates for Wuppertal was a more positive outcome than many had expected.
The Corona Ausschuss co-founder had chosen Wuppertal’s district 101 to enter the elections, because this was where Thomas Haldenwang had launched himself as a CDU-candidate. As the former head of the German intelligence service, known as the ‘Verfassungsschutz’, Haldenwang is directly responsible for the prosecution of Reiner Fuellmich and his abduction from Mexico.
With the slogan ‘Reconciliation instead of division’, Fuellmich garnered 1051 votes (0.7% of Wuppertal’s total) as an independent candidate, therewith outperforming Die Basis (0.2%), the political party whose face he had been in 2022.
In the run-up to the October 2022 elections, Die Basis had rapidly acquired tens of thousands of members and – in the heyday of Corona Ausschuss – looked set to win several seats in the Bundestag. The sudden split within Corona Ausschuss, in September 2022, immediately led to splintering within Die Basis. The split also formed the start of Fuellmich’s prosecution and imprisonment.
Thomas Haldenwang scored significantly higher with 36,841 votes (24.3%). Obtaining second place in Wuppertal, however, was also not enough to obtain a seat in the Bundestag. First place went to Helge Lindh of the SPD, who received 50,907 votes (33.6%), thus retaining his Bundestag seat, which he has had since 2017. In total, 153,145 votes were cast in Wuppertal, of which 1% was declared invalid. The turnout was 77.9%.
Haldenwang had resigned as president of the Verfassungsschutz, mid-November 2024, specifically to enter the elections. In doing so, he attracted criticism because in recent years he had developed, through the Verfassungsschutz, the concept of ‘right-wing extremism’, positioning it as a ‘danger to democracy’. In fighting this perceived danger, the upcoming AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) in particular was targeted and even threatened to be banned. With Haldenwang’s entry into politics, the impression therefore arose that by criminalising political opposition, he had abused his position with the aim to guarantee his, and the CDU’s, election success.
The position ‘President des Bundesamtes für Verfassungsschutz’ has been vacant since Haldenwang’s departure, with the two vice-presidents – Sinan Selen and Silke Willems – temporarily holding the reigns. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser indicated that she wanted to await the election results, before appointing a successor. It is not known if, or when, Haldenwang will resume his old post.
According to German electoral law, election candidates must enjoy equal chances to campaign for an optimal number of votes. The management of JVA Rosdorf (the prison where Reiner Fuellmich is being kept on remand) refused, however, to accommodate Fuellmich’s campaign. Bar the monthly three visiting hours for family and friends, Fuellmich was given no extra visiting time to meet with his campaign team, or give press statements. Lack of guard capacity was the reason provided by the prison’s management.
The campaign for Reiner Fuellmich, run entirely by volunteers, consisted of posters hung all over Wuppertal’s district 101. On 8 and 15 February, the campaign team held three events in the Wuppertal’s city centre, with music and speeches by supporters. Fuellmich’s was the only election campaign in which the candidate himself was not able to take part.
A supporter’s offer to pay several million euros in bail for Fuellmich’s release was rejected. Because Fuellmich faces a substantial prison sentence, the risk of flight would be too high, it was argued. In the fall of 2024, public prosecutor John requested a sentence of three years and nine months. He has also successfully appealed the dismissal of 16 previously submitted charges. These charges will form the basis of a second criminal trial against Reiner Fuellmich, after which the sentences of the trials will be combined. The second criminal case will start after the first has been completed
[i] The results reported in this article are based on the preliminary count of 27 February 2025, 10:55.
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German election process
The German electoral process was changed in 2023, in an attempt to limit the growing number of seats in the Bundestag. Under the new system, parties need at least 5% of the votes to secure seats, unless they have at least three candidates who obtained first place in their constituency.
In the run up to the elections, dependent non-party candidates, like Reinier Fuellmich, must first collect a minimum of 200 signatures supporting their candidacy, to be able to register. These signatures are then checked and verified. The deadline for this initial phase was 20 January 2025.
The actual voting took place on February 23. Voters must cast two votes: the first is for a local candidate (such as, in this case, Reiner Fuellmich, Thomas Haldenwang or Helge Lindh). The second vote goes to a political party. As Fuellmich competed as a party-less candidate, no second vote could be cast for him.
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Election fraud?
There are several indications that the results of the German elections have been manipulated. Christian Abel of AfD, for example, retweeted a video clip, in which the results on the website ‘Wahl zum Deutschen Bundestag’ do not correspond with those of another official website, ‘Bundeswahlleiterin.de’. In a video clip in a Telegram post from anonymous.org, a postal worker can be seen putting ballot papers in favour of AfD into a shredder. The video allegedly originated from a Telegram channel in which ‘radical AfD opponents’ exchanged ideas to limit AfD’s success.
Online news channel NTV reported that only 9,000 votes out of 213,000 expat voters have been processed. Marcel Luthe on X notes that the 213,000 is a conservative estimate and that the real number is 3 million. In several countries, for instance, ballot papers did not arrive on time, or not at all, as reported by the German ambassador in London. In other countries, such as Denmark, voters did receive their ballot papers, but it was too late to return them on time. As many government-critics have left Germany since the corona crisis, it can be assumed that, had all the ballot papers of this group been processed on time, the distribution of Bundestag seats may have turned out differently.