The public nature of elections is a fundamental precondition for democratic political will-formation. It ensures the correctness and verifiability of the election events, and hence creates a major precondition for the well-founded trust of the citizen in the correct operation of the elections. The state form of parliamentary democracy, in which the rule of the people is mediated by elections, in other words is not directly exercised, demands that the act of transferring state responsibility to parliamentarians is subject to special public monitoring. The fundamentally required public nature of the election procedure covers the electoral proposal procedure, the election act (broken regarding the ballot by the secret nature of elections) and the ascertainment of the election result (see BVerfG, judgment of the Second Senate of 3 July 2008 – 2 BvC 1/ 07, 7/07 –, Neue Zeitschrift für Verwaltungsrecht 2008, p. 991 (992) with further references). 107 a) The basis for public elections is formed by the fundamental constitutional options for democracy, the republic and the rule of law (Article 38 in conjunction with Article 20.1 and 20.2 of the Basic Law). 108 aa) In a representative democracy, the elections of the people’s representation constitute the fundamental act of legitimisation. The ballot in the elections to the German Bundestag forms the major element of the process of will-forming from the people to the state bodies, and hence at the same time constitutes the basis for political integration. Compliance with the election principles applicable to this, and confidence in compliance with them, hence constitute preconditions for a viable democracy. Only by the possibility of monitoring whether the elections comply with the constitutional election principles is it possible to ensure that the delegation of state power to the people’s representation, which forms the first and most important part of the uninterrupted legitimisation chain of the people to the bodies and office-holders entrusted with state tasks, does not suffer from a shortcoming. The democratic legitimacy of the elections demands that the election events be controllable so that manipulation can be ruled out or corrected and unjustified suspicion can be refuted. This is the only way to facilitate the well-founded trust of the sovereign in the correct formation of the representative body. The obligation incumbent on the legislature and on the executive to ensure that the election procedure is designed constitutionally and is implemented properly is not sufficient by itself to impart the necessary legitimacy. Only if the electorate can reliably convince itself of the lawfulness of the transfer act, if the elections are therefore implemented “before the eyes of the public” (see Schreiber, Handbuch des Wahlrechts zum Deutschen Bundestag, 7th ed. 2002, § 31 marginal no. 2) is it possible to guarantee the trust of the sovereign in Parliament being composed in a manner corresponding to the will of the voters that is necessary for the functioning of democracy and the democratic legitimacy of state decisions (see North Rhine/Westphalia Constitutional Court (Verfassungsgerichtshof Nordrhein-Westfalen – NRW VerfGH), judgment of 19 March 1991 – VerfGH 10/90 –, Neue Zeitschrift für Verwaltungsrecht 1991, p. 1175 (1179); Hanßmann, Möglichkeiten und Grenzen von Internetwahlen, 2004, p. 184). 109 23/37