Laupheim (dpa/lsw) - After his challenge to the mayoral election in Laupheim was rejected, the defeated CDU candidate Kevin Wiest now wants to sue against this decision. According to a letter from Wiest's lawyers, the politician announced on Tuesday that a decision had been made to file a lawsuit against the decision of the Tübingen regional council before the Sigmaringen administrative court.
The SPD politician Ingo Bergmann won the mayoral election in the town of 23,000 inhabitants in the district of Biberach on April 24 with a lead of just seven votes. Wiest ended up in second place and subsequently complained about several irregularities in the election and therefore lodged an objection to the election with the regional council in Tübingen. The authority rejected the objection last week.
It was not objectionable that the municipal election committee had decided against a new count, it said in justification. There is also no legal reason for ordering a recount. In addition, from the point of view of the authority, the result was not incorrectly determined, nor were essential regulations violated in the election, a spokesman had announced.
Wiest's lawyers want to clarify in a legal dispute whether the city has violated the principle of publicity. Because the municipal election committee withdrew from the public for about ten minutes and deliberated secretly, as the letter from the politician's lawyers says. It also cannot be ruled out with a probability bordering on certainty that a recount would have come to a different result given this extremely tight voting result, it says. Südwestrundfunk first reported on Wiest's planned lawsuit.
