Research
Fact check: Do traffic lights manipulate voting rights?
Union parliamentary group leader Friedrich Merz accuses the coalition factions SPD, Greens and FDP of manipulating electoral law in favor of Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth. photo
© Michael Kappeler/dpa
CDU leader Merz accuses the traffic light of manipulation: With a vote on voting rights, she wants to ensure that Green politician Roth keeps her constituency. What’s true about the claim?
Today will be in Bundestag voted on a change to the Federal Election Act. Among other things, it is about redesigning the constituencies in Saxony-Anhalt and Bavaria.
In this context, Union faction leader Friedrich Merz (CDU) accused the coalition factions SPD, Greens and FDP of manipulating electoral law in favor of Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth (Greens).
claim
The change in electoral law is intended, among other things, to ensure that the Bavarian constituency of Augsburg-Stadt “does not have too many CSU voters” and that Claudia Roth “can keep her constituency in the next federal election in Augsburg-Stadt,” said Merz on Monday in Berlin.
Evaluation
Misleading argument.
Facts
The debate was sparked by the planned redistribution of a constituency from Saxony-Anhalt to Bavaria. In Bavaria, according to the proposals of the traffic light factions of the SPD, Greens and FDP, an additional constituency is to be formed from parts of the previous constituencies of Augsburg-Land, Neu-Ulm and Ostallgäu. According to the Federal Electoral Act, constituencies must always be restructured when the proportion of the population changes massively.
The Union is now complaining that the reduced size of the Augsburg-Land constituency (the city of Königsbrunn is to be separated) will result in an advantage for Green politician Roth and that she can “keep her constituency”.
It is true that Roth also represents the interests of her home constituency in the Bundestag. But she did not win the direct mandate there in the most recent federal election in 2021. At the time, CSU MP Volker Ullrich won this with 28.1 percent of the first votes. So only he can “keep the constituency”. Roth received 20.6 percent.
Today’s Minister of State for Culture entered the Bundestag via her party’s state list. Politicians on this list get into parliament via the second vote – the higher up you are, the higher the probability of this happening. Roth was number one on the list.
With regard to Königsbrunn, it is true that Ullrich did particularly well in the federal election compared to Roth: the gap between the two was almost 22.7 percentage points in the city and only 7.5 points in the entire constituency. But of the total votes cast in the constituency, only around ten percent ended up in a Königsbrunner urn. That means: In a theoretical scenario in which the Augsburg city would have voted in 2021 without Königsbrunn, Ullrich would still have won by far the most first votes.
CSU also has an advantage
With the layout planned by the traffic light in Bavaria, a new constituency of Memmingen is to be created. According to current case law, a direct candidate who is successful there will only be allocated a Bundestag mandate if this is covered by the result of the second vote.
Merz also accused the traffic light coalition of not finding it necessary to reach agreement with the Bavarian state government about the change. “On the contrary: once again she decides alone, once again without any consultation with the affected federal state.” The CDU/CSU parliamentary group is instead advocating for the wider constituency to be formed in the state capital Munich with its growing population.