District elections in the GDR 1958
The district elections in the GDR in 1958 took place together with the Volkskammer elections in 1958 on November 16, 1958. It was the second district elections in the GDR .
Electoral system
It was a sham election . It could only be voted on the unified list of the National Front . The election did not affect the strength of the factions. Their size was determined in advance. The electoral law of the GDR allowed public control of the electoral count on paper. In practice, this did not take place for fear of repression. The deputies were determined in the district assembly .
The district elections were also held in East Berlin . Due to the four-power status of the city of Berlin, East Berlin was not part of the GDR, but the “City Council of Greater Berlin” (meaning East Berlin) was in fact equivalent to a district day.
In order to achieve the highest possible approval for the election proposal of the National Front, the SED Politburo decided on June 15, 1957, a secret instruction on the validity of the ballot papers in local elections, which was presented orally to all election officers. According to this, ballot papers for which candidates had been deleted or for which additions such as “peace” or the like had been made should also be considered valid approvals. Only ballot papers in which all candidates had been struck off (like an X across the whole ballot paper) were counted as no votes.
The legal basis for the election was the law on the elections for the district days of the German Democratic Republic of August 4, 1954.
Election result
The turnout for the election of the district days (including East Berlin) was according to official information with 12,521,050 votes cast and 12,670,778 registered voters at 98.82%. 15,377 votes (= 0.12%) were considered invalid. Thus 99.87% approval (12,488,914 votes) was counted for the election proposal of the National Front, 16,758 people or 0.13% had therefore voted against it.
Individual evidence
- ^ Instructions for the electoral officers, Appendix No. 3 to Protocol No. 25/57 of the Politburo of June 15, 1957. In: Judt, Matthias (ed.), GDR history in documents. Resolutions, reports, internal materials and everyday testimonies, Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin, 1st edition, November 1997. Text of the instruction
- ^ Law on the elections for the district days of the German Democratic Republic of August 4, 1954, digitized
- ↑ Election result at the Federal Archives (BArch DP 1/7040) ( Memento of the original from May 15, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
