scrutiny of elections must be justified in light of the interest in conserving the elected people’s representation (see BVerfG, judgment of the Second Senate of 3 July 2008 – 2 BvC 1/07, 7/07 –, Neue Zeitschrift für Verwaltungsrecht 2008, p. 991 (997) with further references). Even where an election error that is relevant to mandates can be restricted to certain mandates, in other words where the whole election did not have to be declared invalid, a weighing up is to be undertaken which may come out in favour of the interest in protecting the status quo. b) The interest in the protection of the status quo of the people’s representation composed in trust in the constitutionality of the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance outweighs the election errors that have been ascertained. Given that there are no indications that voting machines worked incorrectly or might have been manipulated, and hence that the election result would have been different in the constituencies concerned without the deployment of the computer-controlled voting machines, its possible impact on the composition of the 16th German Bundestag can be regarded as marginal at most. Such uncertain impacts do not justify the partial declaration of the invalidity of the elections to the 16th German Bundestag applied for. It should also be taken into account here that the violation of the constitution that was ascertained did not take place with intent, but when the legal situation was still unclear. Under these circumstances, after the above there is no election error making the continuation of the elected people’s representation appear untenable. 164 B. With regard to the fact that the complainants rightly complain of the unconstitutionality of the use of computer-controlled voting machines, the necessary expenses which they have incurred are to be refunded to them according to §§ 18 and 19 of the Law on the Scrutiny of Elections in conjunction with § 34a.3 of the Federal Constitutional Court Act in this respect. Accordingly, the complainant re 1. is to be refunded the necessary expenses in full, and the complainant re 2., whose complaints are partly unfounded, is to be refunded three-quarters of the necessary expenditure. Judges: Voßkuhle, Broß, Osterloh, Di Fabio, Mellinghoff, 36/37 166 LübbeGerhardt, Landau Wolff,