AfD candidate loses Cloppenburg council seat due to clerical error

Andreas Bluhm, an elected candidate for the AfD, has inadvertently lost his seat on the Cloppenburg city council after mistakenly checking the box to reject his mandate on an official form. According to the city administration, the document was signed and returned, and under Lower Saxony's municipal election law, a rejection of a council seat cannot be revoked.

Under normal circumstances, a substitute candidate from the same party would take the seat. However, the AfD in Cloppenburg does not have a replacement candidate available. This error reduces the party's total representation in the council from five seats to four. Bluhm expressed his disappointment to the Nordwest-Zeitung, stating the mistake was unintentional and that he had been looking forward to his work on the council.