German electoral commission rejects Communist Party on formal grounds

The German electoral commission ruled on Thursday that the German Communist Party (DKP) will provisionally not be allowed to participate in the September 26 elections to the federal parliament for failing to meet the necessary formalities.
The DKP, founded in 1968, had lost its status as a political party for repeatedly failing to submit the required statements on its activities to the authorities within the stipulated deadlines, the commission found.
"Deadlines are deadlines," federal election commissioner Georg Thiel said. The DKP, which garnered just 11,558 votes in the proportional count countrywide in 2017 and thus no seats, has four days to appeal the ruling.
The Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany (MLPD), which secured 29,785 votes in the last elections, has been admitted.
The commission began two days of checking the registration of 87 smaller parties and associations on Thursday to assess whether they meet the legal requirements. Parties passed by the commission still have to submit a stipulated number of signatures from backers.
Under the German electoral system, there is a threshold of 5 per cent to enter parliament that works against minor parties, splinter groups and independents.
Six political groups are represented in the outgoing Bundestag. In order of seats they are: the conservative alliance of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) with its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Social Democrats (SPD), the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), the liberal FDP, the hard-left Die Linke and the Greens.