Why is the federal government aiming for a reform of the electoral law?

Parliament has grown since the last federal election.

This is a consequence of the overhang mandates that arise when a party directly wins more constituencies than it would be entitled to based on the second vote result.

These mandates are balanced so that the composition of the Bundestag corresponds as far as possible to the result of the second vote.

The 598 seats actually provided for by law will therefore be surpassed, and a parliament with more than 900 members would even be possible in the future.

Luke Fuhr

Editor in Politics.

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Tim Niendorf

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Such a parliament is not only expensive, the traffic light coalition fears above all that parliament's work will suffer - the committees are becoming so large that it takes a long time for everyone to have their say.

Compromises are easier to find with fewer people involved.

In addition to such logistical problems, the factions of the SPD, Greens and FDP also fear that the population will reject an ever larger parliament.

What is the design of the traffic light?

The factions of the SPD, the Greens and the FDP want to change the electoral law so that the Bundestag should normally only consist of 598 MPs.

Overhang and compensatory mandates will be a thing of the past, and in the future only the second vote that voters use to elect a party's state list would be decisive.

These votes decide how many MPs a party has.

With the constituency vote, which was previously called the first vote, voters decide who will represent them in the Bundestag.

In the future, constituency winners should only enter the Bundestag if their party is entitled to enough seats there.

In the future, it could be the case that a candidate wins his constituency but still does not receive a mandate.

Why should the two voices be renamed?

The second voice will be called the main voice in the future.

The traffic light groups want to underline the core of their reform: the central voice is the vote for a party, not for a candidate.

The constituency vote, on the other hand, is only relevant if the winning candidate belongs to a party that was also successful in the main votes.

In most cases, the winners of the 299 constituencies will continue to represent their voters in Berlin.

Only in the case of "missing main vote coverage" can it happen that constituency winners do not receive a mandate.

The traffic light groups thus emphasize the character of proportional representation, which they prefer to the personalized element of the constituency vote.

How would the Bundestag change?

Above all, the Bundestag would become smaller.

Compared to today, all groups would have fewer MPs in Parliament.

If one calculates the future distribution of seats on the basis of the election results in autumn 2021, each party would lose MPs roughly equally.

The effect would be strongest for the CSU.

So far, however, the party has also benefited from the existing rule, according to which three overhang mandates do not have to be compensated.

Since there will be no overhang mandates in the future, this advantage will no longer apply.

Who would be the losers?

Constituency winners in particularly hard-fought constituencies run the risk of not being elected to the Bundestag despite their success.

This is also pointed out by election researcher Thorsten Faas.

"The traffic light reform would have consequences that shouldn't be ignored," says the scientist from Freie Universität Berlin.

“The CSU, for example, is weaker in cities.

There it performs weaker due to the stronger party competition, and that now reduces the chances of a direct mandate, even if a constituency wins.” A model calculation supports this. In 2021, the CSU won 45 out of 46 constituencies in Bavaria directly.

According to the reform proposal of the traffic light coalition, however, the party would only have been granted around 34 seats due to its second vote result (hereinafter referred to as the main vote).

The 34 best results would have been determined among the 45 constituency winners of the CSU.

The eleven constituency winners with the lowest percentages would not have received a mandate.