All state power emanates from the people – but how?
The key lies in the right to vote.
This is where the composition of the Bundestag is decided.
It is now one of the largest parliaments in the world because the parties prefer a confused electoral system to losing their own seats.
The new attempt by the traffic light coalition to downsize the bloated Bundestag breathes clarity and transparency above all: the "regular" size of 598 seats will not be changed;
Overhang and compensation mandates should be a thing of the past.
Furthermore, according to the ideas of the SPD, Greens and FDP, there is a combination of proportional and personality elections.
The ordinary legislature is free to choose an electoral system.
But the traffic light politicians' proposal also harbors legitimacy problems.
Because not everyone who has won the most votes in a constituency moves into the Bundestag.
One has the impression that the traffic light, the future fixed size of the Bundestag, is more sacred than the direct democratic election of MPs.
Political resistance is programmed
It doesn't have to be a constitutional question (how about equality, about the immediacy of the election?), but there will be political resistance.
Especially among the politicians (in the opposition), who can now calculate whether they would soon still be represented in parliament with this right to vote.
It used to be good practice for a long time to pass the right to vote by consensus, because everyone is affected.
If every new coalition were to push through a law of its own choosing, that would be an oath of disclosure: It showed an expensive inability to reform one’s own cause, any unwillingness to jump over one’s own shadow, a stewing in one’s own juice, of all things, in the face of the self-proclaimed “turning point”. .
The Union is unlikely to sign the new proposal like that.
But at least a start has been made.