KAs soon as he became mayor, he lost the office again. It's about the small town of Großschirma in Saxony and the AfD politician Rolf Weigand.
On March 3, he won the election for mayor in the first round with almost 60 percent of the vote against two competitors. On Friday, the Freiberg district office announced that the election would be canceled due to several voting errors and a new election would be ordered.
The election audit revealed several violations: Weigand's “handwritten signature,” which was expressly required by law, was missing from the election proposal. In addition, Weigand was featured on the front page of the town's citizens' newspaper of Großschirma at the beginning of February as “2. Deputy Mayor” was signed, even though there was no case for representation. This gave him an advantage over his competitors.
Missing signature “important”
The required timely announcement to be able to inspect the voters' register and apply for voting slips was also not made. In particular, the missing signature was classified as “significant” by the election audit authority. The municipal election committee should not have allowed Weigand to vote without her, the statement says.
The 39-year-old Weigand ran as an individual candidate in the election, although it is known that he has been doing politics for the AfD for a long time. His competitor André Erler from the “Independent Citizens' Association” got 22.3 percent, Gunther Zschommler from the CDU got 18.2 percent.
4,400 citizens were eligible to vote, and a good 73 percent took part. The election became necessary because the previous FDP mayor, Volkmar Schreiter, committed suicide last fall. Weigand had already competed against Schreiter in 2018, but was defeated by him. He then targeted the mayor with numerous supervisory complaints.
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Weigand joined the AfD in 2013, was chairman of the “Junge Alternative” and is a member of the state parliament. He attended meetings of the officially dissolved ethnic-national wing of the AfD, which was led by Björn Höcke. In the state parliament, Weigand called for a list of all women of childbearing age to be drawn up, broken down by nationality and citizenship.
Last year he also took part in a poster campaign against the alleged early sexualization of children under the motto “Gender madness in the timetable”. The aim was to prevent sex education classes in primary schools. The poster showed a little girl holding a teddy bear with a plush penis in her hands.
Weigand was the second mayor in Saxony to come to office through the AfD. Tim Lochner, who is independent but ran for the AfD, was elected alongside him in Pirna in Saxon Switzerland.