Overview

• After the 14 September first round, 147 runoff contests for mayors, lord mayors and district administrators will be held across North Rhine-Westphalia on 28 September.
• The NRW Interior Ministry says no new voting notifications will be issued for the runoff and confirms that voting is possible with an ID if the original card is missing.
• Hagen reports a packing error that placed a second ballot paper in roughly 300 to 400 postal voting packages, traced to a change in how materials were pre-inserted.
• Under municipal election law, multiple ballots in one postal envelope are treated as one: identical markings count as a valid vote, differing markings render the vote invalid.
• Only Herne’s Frank Dudda and Hamm’s Marc Herter won outright in the first round, with runoffs now set in major cities including Cologne, Dortmund, Duisburg, Essen and Hagen, where Dennis Rehbein (CDU) faces Michael Eiche (AfD).