"If we look there, who should do the work?
I founded my own center with some colleagues, that is:
Center for the Investigation, Reappraisal, Legal Prosecution and Prevention of Crimes against Humanity.
Many people always say, why crimes against humanity?
Because what we experienced here were crimes against humanity.
People have been persecuted. Doctors are still being persecuted today.
Doctors are locked up in prison for doing their job.
My colleague Rainer Fuellmich is in prison in Göttingen. He is also a great enlightener.
There can only be reappraisal if we change the political situation.
Because these political conditions that we have, in which we simply hand over power, will never lead to a reappraisal.
Because, as I said, then the perpetrators would come to terms with it themselves.
Nobody can assume that those who committed these crimes against humanity will stand up and say: Yes, we did it.
And now we would like to stand before the court ourselves, before the judges we have chosen ourselves, before the
prosecutors we have chosen ourselves, for them to judge whether what we did was right or wrong.
The judges who three months ago, before the RKI files were leaked, were all still telling me that they all did everything
right back then, and that these judges should now suddenly come to terms with the situation... That won't work either.
It will only work then... - and Ralf Boes has just announced it, and I agree with Ralf Boes, with many
people, just take a look at the website he mentioned.
I think we have to go through the federal states.
We have our own constitution in every federal state.
And since they are separate constitutions, each of the constitutions in the federal
state allows us to amend these constitutions.
We have the power in our hands. You just don't know it..."
Today I would like to welcome attorney Ralf Ludwig to our Kla.TV studio.
Hello.
At the demo in Berlin you said that we have the power in our hands, but we don't even know it.
So I don't know either. I don't even know what kind of power I have in my hand.
And I don't even know how I should influence political decisions, how that works.
Can you help us, can you help me, can you help the viewers a little?
Yes, in principle it's not that difficult.
We have 16 federal states in Germany and each state has its own constitution.
And every state constitution - Hesse aside for a moment, but basically also Hesse - every state
constitution has the option of popular legislation.
This means that the people who live in the respective federal state can make their own laws.
And they can not only make laws, they can also amend the constitution, the respective state constitution.
So they can change the rules of coexistence, the rules of the structure, the political
structure, in their federal state if they want to.
This requires certain majorities. In other words, there are always three steps.
The first step is a popular motion. This means that the idea is put forward.
You have to collect a certain small number of votes.
The second is a so-called referendum.
In other words, you have to prove that a certain number of people in the country are interested in this topic.
That is also always the most difficult stage and once you have overcome this stage, then there is an election, as you know it in
an election, then on a Sunday the people are called to the polling stations and can then vote on this political issue or a
law that you introduce or something similar and can then say, if we as people in this province want it to go
this way or that way or that there is this law, that regulation or that regulation not.
In principle, this is provided for in every state constitution.
And that means that if we wanted to, we could intervene in the political decisions ourselves - apart from just making
a cross every four or five years and hoping that the right people come out of it and make the right decisions.
Ah yes. And the state constitutions - now I'm a bit lost... We also have a constitution.
What is that? Somehow, it doesn't work at the federal level, it only works at the state level. How does that work?
Yes, so of course we have the Basic Law, and the Basic Law is already called the Basic Law - and not the Constitution
of Germany or the German Constitution, but it is called: "The Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany".
There are, of course, historical reasons for this. Germany was divided after the Second World War.
Germany was occupied, was occupied by different, indeed by the four victorious powers, and
Germany was divided up territorially, so to speak.
In other words, the territorial integrity of the German Reich no longer existed.
And then the Cold War started, so to speak, with the West and the East, essentially Russia - and then the Soviet Union.
And the Western powers had different views on how to deal with Germany, how to deal with
Germany, what the future of Germany should be.
And yes, the Federal Republic of Germany was then created in 1949, so to speak, and the Federal Republic of
Germany is of course only a part of the entire German Reich.
And at that time it was still assumed that a solution would emerge at some point, a solution for the whole of Germany, and
that is why a German constitution was not created, because the constitution could only have been created for the entire
territory of the Reich, the former Reich territory, the entire German territory, and it was called the Basic Law.
In principle, this is the basic law of the three Allied victorious powers, which was then negotiated
with the politicians in Herren-Chiemsee, more or less.
And this Basic Law also survived reunification.
At that time, too, an all-German constitution was not created, although this was provided for in the Basic Law, but the
Basic Law was continued in the same way as a constitution.
And I always say that a constitution can only be a constitution if it has a sovereign.
And the sovereign is not, as Carl Schmitt only says, the one who decides on the state of emergency, but
the sovereign is the one who can change the rules.
And our constitution does not allow people to change the rules.
This means that the Basic Law in this sense cannot be a constitution, because the
Basic Law does not recognize a sovereign.
Or the only sovereign act we know as citizens is voting - electing the Bundestag once every four years.
And that is the only participation of the people in the Federal Republic of Germany.
Nothing else is provided for. There is no popular legislation.
There is still the provision in Article 20 that the sovereign determines policy through
elections and votes, but there are no votes in Germany.
There is no voting law, and therefore there is no vote.
Then there is Article 146, which provides that the German people can give themselves a new constitution or a constitution.
Many constitutional lawyers say that this paragraph or this article does not apply, this norm does not apply.
You can discuss it at length, but in every state constitution, in contrast, in every single state constitution in Germany, there is
the possibility for people to actively intervene in legislation through the three steps I have just mentioned, to
create laws themselves, i.e. to change rules themselves.
And not only can they change application rules such as laws, but they can even - as I said a little parenthesis
around Hesse - change the constitution in every federal state, i.e. change the rules of their coexistence.
There are two essential values that must be observed.
This is always the principle of democracy, i.e. every political decision must be based on the will of the people.
The second is the guarantee of human dignity. So we must not change the rules in such a way
that the guarantee of human dignity is eliminated.
But these are the only rules and within these rules the people in each federal state can decide.
So, for example, we could decide that we no longer want to elect the state government or the state parliament every five (correct:
four) years, but we now want to elect it every two years.
Or we could decide that we no longer want to have a state government at all, but that the state parliament should
appoint administrators to carry out certain tasks and so on.
We can also theoretically abolish parliament if we have an alternative that does not represent the democratic
will in a comparable way, but expresses the democratic will.
So we can change a lot, but only at state level, not actually at a national level.
Yes, very interesting. And how can you initiate such a process?
Suppose we now wanted to change something in this whole political structural landscape or we wanted to change the appointment of
judges, for example, or of public prosecutors, so that they are no longer appointed by
the Ministry of Justice, but by the people.
How can you do that? How can you take the initiative?
In principle, as I said, all laws, including the state constitutions, can be amended.
And in principle you can simply launch an initiative, one or two people can launch an initiative...
...So you and me?
We both could - well, probably not now, because we don't live in the same federal state, but in principle yes.
If we lived in the same federal state, we could just say we want a change in the law.
Then we prepare a legal text, so to speak, as we imagine it - in other words, what we do.
Mhm.
There are also differences. You can also make popular inquiries by having Parliament deal with certain
questions, so that they have to hold a session, a parliamentary session, to deal with this issue.
But now purely popular legislation means that we both write a law, so to speak, and submit this law, which
is usually submitted to the State Parliament Presidium.
And then it is published as normal, so to speak, that a popular motion is now being launched here with this amendment to the law.
And then we can go out and collect votes for this change in the law that we have.
And if we then reach a certain quorum - in the first stage it is relatively low, in some countries it is only
6,000 or 5,000 votes, if we have these votes, then we can start a so-called referendum.
This means that the state parliament then deals with the referendum petition and may or may not
approve it. Then there would be no referendum.
Then it goes to the referendum and then in the referendum you have to collect a certain number of signatures within a
certain period of time, usually between six and eight months.
And if this quorum has been exceeded, then the state parliament deals with this issue again and examines
whether or not to approve this legislative initiative.
And if he doesn't grant it, then there is a referendum, which is like an election.
Then the citizens are called to the polls on a Sunday.
And then they say: Okay. The citizens are asked whether they want this law, yes or no.
As you said at the demo in Berlin, the final decision must once again be up to the people.
This could therefore be practically initiated via these state constitutions.
Yes, exactly. During the corona period, we have seen in particular how politics has encroached on people's lives.
And I think it must be the case that people can defend themselves against this encroaching policy.
And what I have just described, these steps, these three steps, take an eternally long time.
And until then, of course, we were unable to prevent anything.
And that is why my proposal would be that the very first thing we do is to write a
so-called veto right into all state constitutions.
So we are basically saying that every law and every regulation that the state government makes will
come into force after three months at the earliest.
During these three months, people with a certain quorum have time to collect signatures.
And if they have a certain number of signatures, I'm thinking of two and a half percent of the population, which can be arranged
differently, then there will be a referendum on this law.
Because then two and a half percent basically said we don't want this law.
Which is quite a lot. I mean, five percent is a parliamentary group.
So here, two and a half percent say we don't want that.
That the entire people, i.e. the people of the respective federal state, then vote on
whether they want this law or this ordinance.
And if the legislator issues an ordinance or a law - because he says it is absolutely urgent, we have to do it quickly now
- if he does not give the three-month deadline, then a mandatory vote must be held on this law, on this ordinance.
So that we don't have a situation where the legislator makes laws very quickly, so to speak.
I always say that if people had been able to vote on the mask requirement, it wouldn't have come about.
Yes, the obligation to wear a mask was introduced in a kind of cloak-and-dagger operation and it was this
that created the fear that was then the prerequisite for people to get vaccinated, for example.
And here we have to say that if they want to make night and fog laws, so to speak, which are to come into force in a short time,
then the politicians must immediately and always put these laws to the people for a vote,
so that the people can say "no" if necessary.
That is this right of veto, the final decision-making authority, as I always say. Yes.
That the people can say "no" and that this is not the way to get things done.
We can do that. We can do that in every federal state.
And that would make it clear to the politicians that every law they make - now, for example, that was at
federal level, precisely this debt that they have incurred.
But it would also be possible, for example, to say... So the Federal Council must also approve federal laws.
And if we, the people of the federal states, had told the government that you must not agree to this,
then there would not have been this debt, for example.
And we as citizens must have this power, that we don't just vote once and then can no longer control what is then done by the
politicians in individual cases, which coalitions are formed, how the politicians decide, but that we as citizens can say at any
time on every single political issue that we don't want that.
Are there already signs that groups are working in this direction and have taken the initiative?
Yes, the idea of the whole thing is to make it completely decentralized.
So we don't want some kind of central organization to do this.
Instead, we have basically said that two things are crucial for us.
The groups and organizations that do this have to deal with each other democratically in a certain way.
We say always make acceptance-based decisions.
In other words, if we want real democracy, we first have to live it ourselves on a small scale.
In other words, we cannot demand that our society must be democratic.
And we ourselves on a small scale, in the area in which we operate, do not act democratically with each other,
do not act in an acceptance-based manner with each other.
So this is an essential decision under this condition.
And the second point is to think about how we can motivate as many people as possible to get enough signatures for such a
referendum, or first of all for the petition for a referendum.
And this should be completely decentralized, small cells should do this, which can decide much better on the spot than anyone
centrally, what the topics are, what is interesting, and so on.
And there are so many initiatives being formed right now.
We really just suggested it and said, "Man, do something.
And we have now been invited to Baden-Württemberg.
There is a huge circle of initiatives that want to do this, that want to implement it.
I've just come from Saxony-Anhalt, shortly before this interview. I was in Güsten in Saxony-Anhalt.
Many members, many district chapters of the grassroots party "DieBasis", which is also interested
in this kind of grassroots democracy, met there.
And that's exactly what we did, so basically we just discussed why anyone should vote for the base.
And surprisingly, that was exactly the result:
Because we are the ones who, in the end, will be able to achieve precisely this kind of grassroots democracy - that decisions are
made on a subsidiary basis from the bottom up and no longer from the top down, that we are decentralized, that
all key decisions are made locally - that all people are involved in all political decisions.
This is actually the unique selling point of the base. And we want to communicate this more strongly to the outside world.
This is precisely the idea that decisions are made at the bottom and not at the top.
We don't need a central office to make decisions for us; all the key decisions that affect our lives are made locally.
And then, in principle, if you have a large country and so on, decisions can be made
together for everyone through local decisions.
Yes, very interesting, because you constantly hear people saying that they do what they want to
us up there and we can't do anything about it.
They have to put up with it all, like rain and snow.
The debt brake is released and our country goes into freefall.
But it is very interesting that a way is now being found after all.
What could I do now, for example, where could I join if I was interested in taking back, as you say, the
power that actually belongs to me. What could I do?
So first of all, it's enough that you simply set up a group in your neighborhood yourself.
Or it doesn't even have to be a group, we call it a cell.
So that you just meet up with friends in your neighborhood - ideally in the neighborhood - get together with people.
And read "Why are the lambs silent?" by Rainer Mausfeld, for example.
Because Rainer Mausfeld has analyzed very, very well in this book how our political structure actually works, why we have nothing
to say, why we have a representative democracy that has nothing to do with democracy and that does
not allow us to actually make our own decisions.
What is the point? What does Mr. Mausfeld say?
Well, Mr. Mausfeld is basically saying that this is in the founding of the United States of America, more or less
the first constitution, the first democratic constitution.
Well, that's debatable, the Polish constitution was quicker.
But the first great democratic constitution was the American constitution.
And the American constitutional fathers actually argued about it at the time:
Do we want to introduce a direct democracy, where we involve people in decisions, or do we want a representative
democracy - which is actually a contradiction in terms.
Representative democracy - you are either representative or democratic - a representative democracy
is, if you think about it, a contradiction in terms.
And at that time, the realization prevailed that if we had genuine grassroots democratic decision-making power, then the
wealth of the wealthy would be in danger, because the poor might then decide democratically that the
money or assets should be distributed differently.
So of course it was a purely economic consideration.
And then we thought about how we can still call it a democracy, but build it in such a way that it is not a democracy.
And that is the representative democracy that we have now.
So as I said, everything you have just said, the way people experience it, that's how it actually is.
They do something up there and we can't decide anything.
This feeling is not deceptive, but it is true: We make our cross, that's it...
And then it's over, we don't know anything!
So if you voted CDU now, you probably didn't expect to get even greener policies than you
did with the Greens, who you voted out before.
People probably didn't want that.
I don't know, but I assume that they didn't want it, otherwise they would have voted for the Greens and not the CDU.
And they can't do anything about it. Now they sit there for four years and then people
think again, okay, next time we'll show them.
But let's not vote for the CDU, let's vote for the SPD.
That's what we always experience. And then nothing changes again.
Then they are totally surprised that when it's the others' turn, nothing changes again.
Because we cannot influence individual political decisions.
And we can do that in principle according to the state constitutions, but we don't do that.
Rainer Mausfeld says that, so to speak. They are like illusionists standing in front of it.
These doors exist and the illusionists, the magicians, stand in front of them and virtually cover
these doors for us, through which we could actually go.
And representative democracy can be described as an elite oligarchy, an electoral oligarchy, an aristocracy, whatever.
Because we are allowed to choose from a certain number of elites those who will rule us for the next four years.
But we don't have a real choice to change anything.
We would only have that if we could intervene in individual political decisions.
And the hurdles are very high. What we can't do at the moment.
And the idea of freedom begins with no.
So from this project, which I also initiated in Berlin, it can actually be said that we must put the decision-making
authority, the final decision-making authority for the individual political issues in the hands of the people.
We have to decide on this: Do we want to release the debt brake?
We have to decide how our education system is structured.
We have to decide how our justice system is structured.
We have to decide how we want to have our energy and so on and so forth.
We can make all these decisions ourselves.
And I maintain that each individual person can make the decision no worse than any
expert or anyone who is appointed as an expert.
They are happy to advise and can give their opinion.
But as far as I'm concerned, I think I can make my own decision very well and I trust
every other person in Germany to do the same.
Well, after the politics of the last few years, it should be clear to everyone that they
could perhaps have done it better themselves.
So I could now start to found a cell in my area and could simply take the initiative there.
But where could I get incentives and input, for example?
Is there any website where you can find out a bit more? Can you give us a tip?
So it's not online right now, the site, but "freiheit-beginnt-mit-nein.de", this site does exist.
As it says here: Freedom begins with no.
This page may already be online when this interview is published.
We are in the final stages of getting them ready. There will be more information soon.
But the idea is also there, there will also be an opportunity to network.
But the possibility of networking will be organized in such a way that analogue networking is essential.
And that can then be mapped digitally. So we don't want people to network digitally.
So that people, as we are experiencing now, write to each other on social media and so on, are
outraged, have lots of ideas, write lots of things.
Instead, people need to network locally in an analog way.
And if they are networked analogously, then they can also show in the portal that we are a group
or a cell, we are here, we want to do something.
They can then get help from others, offer help to others and so on.
But we are essentially concerned with analog networking.
We want people to network with each other locally, to start discussing with each other and to have this idea
in their heads that we can change this society by having enough signatures for this referendum.
Because this second stage is just so difficult, getting 200,000 signatures together is
just very difficult. In Saxony it's 450,000.
But we can do that if people network beforehand.
And they should discuss politics with each other.
But they should also learn how to create a space for debate - this is also something Rainer Mausfeld says - where
people can discuss things openly, fairly and democratically, where extreme opinions can be tolerated.
There must be no firewalls. Extreme opinions are important for forming opinions in a democracy. Extreme opinions never prevail.
But they are necessary in order to find a good social opinion, a good social cut, no matter how big the society is.
And that's what people learn. That's our idea, that they start to discuss with each other
in this way, that they understand in this way:
How do we actually manage to make decisions that take everyone along with us?
And if we can do this on a small scale, then we can also do it on a large scale.
Yes, well, if I've understood correctly, the whole process of learning to talk to each other again, learning to put up with
other opinions, learning to stand shoulder to shoulder towards a common goal, and also being willing to take
responsibility, being willing to make decisions, face up to problems and so on, is important.
But also not to delegate this to politicians who do what they want with you, but to say again:
I am indeed sovereign, I am taking my responsibility back into my own hands.
The most important thing is a very important point.
You have now said in your speech that you did not include a very important point in your list of
points, or in fact the most important point for me.
I'm sure you thought of that, but didn't say it: the most important thing is not to talk
to each other, but to listen to each other.
We talk quite often. When we watch these talk shows, for example, which are everywhere on television,
lots of people talk. But nobody listens to each other.
And the system we are proposing - in other words, we are proposing a certain way for the cells to reach decisions
together, namely through systemic consensus - is essentially about listening to each other for the first time.
Everyone has the same space to express themselves and no one is allowed to criticize others for what they say.
Instead, the statement stands. So we ask a question, we want to solve a problem, and then there are answers.
And everyone is allowed to give their answer and no one is allowed to criticize the other person's answer.
And when we ask later, how great is your resistance?
So what do you feel inside when you say that this is the right answer to this question? What do you feel then?
And that's why it's said that freedom starts with saying no. Because if I feel that I'm not
doing well, then I have to be able to say no.
I have to say, I don't want that - like with the coronavirus vaccination or the mask.
If I realize I don't want that, I have to be able to say no. Because that is freedom.
The freedom is to say: No, I don't want that. That only concerns me.
And freedom always starts with no. That's why it's called that.
Because whenever I say, stop, I have resistance here, and a group opinion is formed and I realize I don't
want that, then I say: stop, no, I'm not happy with that!
And then the group listens! And then the group realizes:
Okay, the person has a pain, maybe we have to change our decision a bit so that the pain is gone from the other person.
And you suddenly find a solution that has the acceptance of the entire group or cell or society or community.
So the right of veto is ultimately nothing else. We always find solutions that are accepted by those affected.
Because we listen to everyone who says no, I'm not happy with that.
That's the idea behind it. And anyone can do it.
And you can only do that yourself.
We cannot somehow organize or delegate this, we can only encourage it.
And people do that. And we can also implement this socially.
Yes. You mentioned that we don't have a real democracy because we have a representative democracy.
Now you also mentioned, ultimately in this interview, but you told me, that there were also problems with
these elections, that they were not really democratic. Apparently there was manipulation.
Firstly, could you explain to me and the viewers again what has come to light or become known along the
way and how this could be counteracted in the future?
So first of all, the only act that the sovereign is allowed to do in Germany is (the election).
I said earlier that, in my view, it is not the sovereign because it is not allowed to change the rules.
But as the saying goes, the only thing the sovereign is allowed to do is vote, i.e. put a cross in the box.
And that means that it should actually be ensured that at least this act of the
sovereign actually reflects what is actually meant.
In other words, we should actually, we should think, well, we are in Germany and Germany is a
democracy and Germany is a constitutional state.
And in Germany, this election process will be carried out properly.
We don't even need to talk about manipulation.
We can start by talking about the fact that there is no structure at all, that it can run smoothly.
The Federal Returning Officer does not know at all how many constituencies there are in Germany when she announces the
official, provisional official final result in the evening.
They don't know that. They are reported. But she has to accept the reports that come in,
but she doesn't know that. She has no overview.
So if you ask her the day before the election in how many constituencies people will actually be
voting tomorrow, she can't say because she doesn't know.
So there are X number of constituencies and nobody knows where they actually are before the election.
There is no central registration of constituencies.
So how do you want to control a result if you don't even know where and how many people are actually voting? Nobody knows.
We founded this organization called WABEO, which means election observation.
It wasn't actually supposed to be launched until September, when the federal elections were actually planned,
and then had to be pulled out of the ground within three months, i.e. those who did it.
I think you already had an interview here with Stephanie Tsomakaeva, who got this off the ground.
A really, really great, tough woman who has worked very hard to make it work.
And people registered so that you knew they were actually real people, not some social media corpses or something, some
bots or something, but real people - who had to register, where the registration was verified - observed the elections.
A total of 3,700 people were out and about - something that has never happened before in the history of the Federal Republic
of Germany - to see how the elections actually take place.
And now there are certain rules when choosing what to look out for.
For example, that the polling station is open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., that the election is held in secret, that there is no
election advertising in or around the polling station, or that people are not given a tip in the polling
station as to who else they should vote for or that someone else goes into the polling booth with them.
Or afterwards, it will close at 6 p.m. and the count will not be taken before 6 p.m. either.
People are allowed to be present and watch the entire process.
And afterwards, when the counting takes place, people are also allowed to be there and watch.
And watch in such a way that they can see what is happening.
And when all the votes have been counted, the election committee for that constituency must announce the election result aloud.
He has to say what the election result is in his polling station so that the public knows that this is now the
election result, which I report to the next higher authority, usually the district returning officer.
And there were irregularities.
Exactly. And now comes the point.
Now there are a lot of irregularities.
First of all, these are the principles of an election, a democratic election.
First of all, it has to be said - and this is also very exciting - that we have received a lot of feedback.
And we can say that everything went well in 80% of the feedback.
In 80 % of the constituencies, as far as we have been able to ascertain, the election was conducted properly.
So all these basic rules, principles, election principles were observed. It did not happen in 20% of cases.
In 20% of cases, they closed the polling stations at 5:30 p.m., kicked out the election observers because
they didn't want the election observers, removed the election observers 20 meters away.
Some of these polling stations are gymnasiums.
And then they were placed 20 meters further away, where of course you can't see at all what goes on which pile.
In some cases, they did not speak the election results out loud.
Yes, a lot of things happened there that shouldn't have happened.
And if we now take into account that the Sahra Wagenknecht alliance has only 9,000 votes less than they would need to enter
the Bundestag, we can now, in principle, in these, that is in total, only the number that we have, that we have now reported,
are 300 constituencies where such mistakes have been made.
300 that we have reported, 300 constituencies have these irregularities.
And we do not now know all the voter numbers in these constituencies, but of those we do know, there are 99,000 votes
alone where these irregularities were such that in principle we cannot verify whether the results that were passed on are the
results that were actually voted for because, as I said, the election results were not even announced in this constituency.
So that means we have 99,000 votes, at least 99,000 if you extrapolate that - we only looked
in 3,000 constituencies, there are about 90,000.
If you extrapolate that now, you can see the dimensions involved here.
There must not have been any manipulation, nobody must have cheated or anything else.
But in principle we can't check at all whether what arrives at the Federal Returning Officer during the night
is actually the result that was determined on the ground.
And there is no recounting and so on. So it's basically a big lottery.
So we don't know whether Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht has five percent or not.
I assume they have five percent, but it is not verifiable because it is not a democratic election in terms of its structure.
And if, for example, this election result has not been announced, how are we supposed to know whether the result that was determined
afterwards is the right one or whether someone has added a few more ballots or taken away a few ballots or something else.
We don't know because the things are then put in envelopes.
Incidentally, the next point is that some of the ballot papers were not packed in sealed envelopes, which is also
necessary, but simply closed in bags with rubber bands, so that you can open them again at any time and change something.
Never imply that they do. But it is possible that they do.
And in a democratic election, we can't even have the appearance that what took place there is not okay.
Especially when, as I said, we only have a difference of 9,000 euros with Sahra Wagenknecht.
9,000 votes!
9,000 votes, exactly. 9,000 votes difference.
And that's just it. In other words, our elections are, I don't even know how to put it, but they are definitely not democratic.
They are not congruent, they are not comprehensible, they are not transparent.
In such a large proportion that it is definitely, definitely relevant to the mandate.
And this has now been established for the first time through systematic election observation by WABEO.
And may I make another bridge? We spoke earlier about the referendums.
And if we now know that these referendums also take place like an election and we know that the results that are determined are not
determined in a clean process and that very, very sensitive majorities are at stake here - the
question of whether or not to change a constitution?
Exactly, that would have been my question.
Exactly, the one question. So, to change a constitution, we need a quorum.
This means a certain number of citizens who take part in this vote at all.
And then there must be a certain majority within this number who participate.
So if you then simply lower the quorum a little in this way - in other words, we theoretically have a two-thirds majority for a
constitutional amendment, but you say, yes, but unfortunately only 39.8 (percent) of people voted and not 40 percent of
people voted - then this constitutional amendment has failed.
Yes, and we cannot control it if the election results, the number of voters and so on, i.e. the result in this polling station is
not announced publicly and we have at least one person sitting in each polling station or in each constituency who listens, writes
it down and then gives us the result so that we can check whether the result that is determined in the end is actually
also the result that they announced in the polling stations.
So, in order to find our way into a direct democracy.
In order to deal with the idea of changing state constitutions at all, we have to make sure
that we are active in observing the elections.
So, election observers are needed everywhere, if I have understood correctly.
Yes, you asked earlier, what can I do?
Now apart from founding this cell, where you have to be very active, I can only recommend everyone to go to wabeo.de.
Next year, I believe, there will be state elections in Baden-Württemberg,
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Saxony-Anhalt.
These elections are to be observed nationwide for the first time.
And you can register there, can verify yourself, costs 6.50 euros.
6.50 euros because there is this verification process, which is quite complicated, but it
makes it clear that there is a person behind it.
And then we can actually check the whole area:
Is what is announced at the end actually the result that actually came out at the polling stations or
in the constituencies? And that's really exciting.
And that this may not be the case - a district administrator, she is the Lord Mayor, from Speyer, was then written to by an
election observer - I have to say this here as a treat..., it's not really a treat, it's actually terribly sad
- that he complained about how he was treated as an election observer at the polling station.
And then this mayor from Speyer, as the district electoral officer, actually wrote back that she thought it
was terrible that people were coming to watch elections.
Because this would basically imply that the elections are not being conducted properly and would therefore
delegitimize our democracy. You have to imagine that.
The public nature of the election is one of the key electoral principles in our electoral law and electoral regulations.
And then a responsible district electoral officer comes along and says that, from her point of view, the fact that someone wants to
watch the election, that someone wants to check whether this - which is now taking place as an act of the
sovereign, as it were, as the only act of the sovereign, as we always call it - is proper.
Just because they are standing there, it would look as if they don't trust them.
And that is the view of things. You have to imagine that.
A Lord Mayor has such a view of the people who are responsible for her being in this position in the first place.
Very interesting. Very nice. Mr. Ludwig, thank you very much for the interview!
It was a real eye-opener. Above all, you can now see what steps each individual can actually take.
So firstly, you can get involved in monitoring the elections.
I think you can turn to WABEO.
Then you can see how you can form a cell or join an existing cell.
Then you can, freedom begins with no.
I think you have now given us the first steps on how we can actually implement this, so that
citizens can take power back into their own hands.
Thank you very much for the very eye-opening interview!
Thank you very much for having me here.