The reform of the electoral law that the Baden-Württemberg state parliament has agreed on does indeed deserve the adjective "historic" - even if historic opportunities were missed.
It is also to be welcomed that every citizen has two votes and, as in the Bundestag elections, the party preference no longer has to coincide with the candidate preference.
The fact that the party congresses will be able to influence the composition of parliament more strongly in the future through the creation of state lists also harbors new opportunities;
only the members have to use this form of inner-party democracy wisely.
But the fact that the co-governing CDU shakes hands with a majority of Greens, SPD and FDP to lower the active voting age in the state to 16, while in the federal government they don’t leave a good hair on the corresponding plans of the traffic light coalition – it can hardly be more opportunistic.
A piece of the madhouse is also the combination of the 70 constituencies with compensation and overhang mandates.
The state parliament has long been significantly larger than the minimum number of 120 seats, and the trend is rising.
This, like the bloating of the Bundestag, should have served as a warning.
Instead, the Greens, CDU and SPD, with presumably even more mandates, are pouring even more grist into their mills than they already have – historically in fact.