Federal Constitutional Court
How fair is the new voting law? – Negotiation in Karlsruhe
Criticizing the traffic light electoral law reform in the strongest terms: CDU leader Friedrich Merz (r.) and the chairman of the CSU, Alexander Dobrindt. photo
© Uli Deck/dpa
Decision made too hastily and simply unfair? In Karlsruhe, the new traffic light choice is being put to the test. This was intended to limit the growth of parliament – keyword “bloated Bundestag”.
Does the traffic light government’s electoral law reform stand up to constitutional concerns? The project should, among other things, support the growth of the Stop Bundestag due to overhang mandates.
The Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe today took aim at the new federal election law, which is to be applied in next year’s federal elections. At the start of the two-day oral hearing there was harsh criticism from the plaintiffs. Among others, the Bavarian state government, members of the Bundestag from the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, the CSU and Left parties and a group of more than 4,000 private individuals are taking action against the new voting law.
The law with its significant changes was passed hastily without the opposition being able to consult, said CDU leader Friedrich Merz. Almost at the last minute, the traffic light deleted the so-called basic mandate clause. This clause previously ensured that a party was represented in the Bundestag even if it had previously failed to pass the five percent hurdle but had won at least three direct mandates. Smaller parties such as the CSU and the Left, which are among the plaintiffs for the reform, could be severely affected by the removal of the basic mandate clause.
The Union also has to worry about seats
With the new traffic light regulations, the number of seats in the Bundestag is to be capped at 630. To achieve this, overhang and compensation mandates, which have previously allowed the Bundestag to continue to grow, should be eliminated. After the last federal election, parliament had 736 members. In the future, the number of seats a party has in parliament will be determined solely by its second vote result – even if it has won more direct mandates. Then the constituency winners with the worst first vote result go away empty-handed. This would particularly affect the Union parties.
The CSU, for example, sharply criticized the planned elimination of overhang mandates. If the new electoral law had already been in force at the last federal election, seven of the successful constituency candidates out of 46 won constituencies in Bavaria would not have made it into the Bundestag. “This leads to frustration among voters,” said Bavarian Interior Minister and member of the state parliament Joachim Hermann. Entire constituencies remained orphaned, entire regions and their concerns were then ignored in the Bundestag. “Even the leaders of the traffic lights didn’t know what they were deciding,” said Merz.
“It is suggested to voters that they can choose a candidate with the first vote,” added CSU regional group leader Alexander Dobrindt. But that is not the case at all, “because the mandate is assigned via the second vote”. Merz spoke of a problematic system change towards pure proportional representation. “The elections in the constituencies will be downgraded to a pure counting function of proportional representation.”
The federal government wants to counteract the image of the “bloated Bundestag”.
On the federal government’s side, the Parliamentary State Secretary of the Interior Ministry, Mahmut Özdemir (SPD), emphasized that the MPs are representatives of the entire German population, not just their constituency. Something must be done about the population’s increasing acceptance problem – which the SPD politician derived from terms such as “bloated Bundestag” and “XXL Bundestag”. The barrier clause is “inevitable”.
The Second Senate had many questions. For example, it needs to be clarified whether this clause might need to be examined more strictly. Is the threshold too high because too many votes are not represented in the Bundestag? Are there any exceptions to the barrier clause? perhaps for state parties, asked the rapporteur at the Federal Constitutional Court, Astrid Wallrabenstein. It is also important to consider how constituency candidates differ from the parties that represent them.
Negotiations will continue on Wednesday. However, a verdict is unlikely to be made for a few months – as far as possible before the next federal election in autumn next year. If the highest court demands changes to the reform, these would still have to be incorporated.