Expensive and bloated - the parliament with its 709 deputies is in the criticism. Now FDP, Greens and Left have launched a joint initiative on reform suffrage. The three opposition parties submitted a bill to downsize the Bundestag.
To achieve this, inter alia, the number of electoral constituencies should be reduced from the current 299 to 250. That would also reduce the number of direct mandates. At the same time, the initiators would like to increase the normal number of parliamentary seats from the current 598 to 630. The combination of these two measures is intended to reduce the likelihood of overhang mandates. Because of overhanging and balancing mandates the last general election had led to a record number of 709 deputies.
A reduction of the Bundestag is already debated for some time. For the time being, efforts to reform electoral law failed in April. At that time, the parties could not agree on how to implement a downsizing of parliament.
So far, one party in particular has benefited from overhang mandates
Overhang mandates arise when a party earns more direct mandates than it deserves after the second vote result. Additional parliamentary seats then arise through compensation mandates for the other parties. The law proposed by the three opposition parties seeks to avoid overhang mandates wherever possible.
"We want to prevent an inflation of the Bundestag and thereby preserve the personified proportional representation," said Greens parliamentary director Britta Haßelmann. "We suggest reducing the number of constituencies to avoid overhang mandates."
The FDP member Stefan Ruppert called the template as "an invitation to the other parties to join or make constructive proposals for change". But there can only be reforms "that do not favor a party unilaterally". At any rate, our firm goal is to prevent an enlargement of the Bundestag. "
The left-wing legal expert Friedrich Straetmanns complained that in the previous deliberations of the Electoral Commission only proposals had come out "that would have favored the Union unilaterally". Parliament is too big and would most likely continue to grow. "That this has to change, that's what big parts of the population and we think so."
So far, the Union does not want to move away from the overhang mandates. So far, she has benefited most from these.
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