Is that a big hit that the traffic light coalition is presenting with its electoral reform? The SPD MP Sebastian Hartmann chose the term on Friday in the opening debate on the plan to make the Bundestag smaller again than the current 736 seats.
Or will the ax be laid on the foundations of democracy? The CSU man Michael Frieser accused the coalition of this. One can see that the government factions and the largest opposition faction are in different spheres when it comes to electoral law, at least at the start of the parliamentary deliberations.
The coalition wants to ensure that the statutory size of the Bundestag, i.e. the “normal number” of 598 seats, can be reliably maintained in the future. No overhangs, no compensatory mandates – thanks to coverage of the main votes and the associated majority rule, this should work.
Main votes and citizen votes
Neither Hartmann nor the other speakers in the coalition chose these core terms of the reform model. It shouldn’t sound too technical to the outside world. But that’s exactly what it’s all about: In the future, applicants and candidates in a constituency should no longer be able to win the direct mandate by having the most votes.
Your party must also have so many second votes in the respective federal state that all direct mandates won can also be allocated. Overhangs are avoided by non-allocation. It should then always hit the winners in a constituency who have the worst percentage results. It’s pruning from the bottom, so to speak – which is why this solution belongs in a category known as the capping model.
In the traffic light proposal, the first vote becomes the constituency vote and the second vote becomes the main vote. The coalition wants to make it clear that the latter has priority, the former is subordinate. The Union dislikes that. Which is why they have also started to rename traditional terms. The first votes are now called “citizen votes”. The logic behind it: If a direct mandate won through these votes is not allocated (or was taken away again according to the Union reading), then the voters of these unsuccessful candidates have been cheated of this citizens’ vote.
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mandates according to the coalition’s proposal, there should be a reliable future.
The line of conflict is clear and points to an election campaign with the right to vote. Or can the Union be pacified with traffic light concessions? The electoral law chairman of the FDP, Konstantin Kuhle, offered the Union faction to talk about at least one point in their proposal (no bill, just a list of five demands). According to Kuhle, one could reduce the number of constituencies and increase the list mandates.
The Union proposed 270 instead of 299 here, 320 instead of 299 there – so a little fewer constituency winners would be affected by capping, but at least in the first election according to this model, 29 previous constituency winners would no longer have a constituency.
By percent or by votes?
The CDU man Philipp Amthor pointed to a point that could make an impression in the further debate. In Bremen, the 2021 traffic light model would have meant that one of the two direct mandates won by the SPD would not have been allocated. Since the traffic light decided on the percentage result as a benchmark, Sarah Ryglewski (a good 30 percent of the first votes) would not be in the Bundestag, but Uwe Schmidt (37 percent) would be. However, Ryglewski had almost 56,000 votes, while Schmidt had around 52,300.
A problem? Possibly. However, the traffic light solution should be more constitutional and also more practical. Because if the non-allocation of direct mandates were based on the actual number of votes and not on the percentage result, all constituencies in Germany would have to have approximately the same number of voters. But that would mean the permanent reshaping of the constituencies.
Will there still be concessions, joint voting and thus no lawsuits from the Union faction in Karlsruhe? Green MP Till Steffen accused the CDU/CSU parliamentary group of not using the time after the traffic light model was first presented (that was last May). Now she has to make a decision in a few weeks. Because the vote in the Bundestag should be before Easter.
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