Traffic light politicians want the Bundestag to be limited to 598 seats

Created: 05/18/2022, 13:05

The Bundestag is currently larger than ever before.

© Christoph Soeder/dpa

With 736 seats, the Bundestag is currently larger than ever.

Representatives of the SPD, Greens and FDP now want to change the right to vote - and are presenting a proposal.

Berlin - With a change in electoral law, members of the traffic light parties want to reduce the Bundestag to 598 seats.

With 736 mandates, it is currently larger than ever.

The proposal leaves the number of 299 constituencies untouched.

In the past two legislative periods, a reform of the electoral law failed, mainly because the CSU and CDU strictly refused to reduce the number of constituencies.

Only one thing would change at the ballot box: voters would be able to cast three votes instead of the previous two.

The initiative comes from the representatives of the SPD, Greens and FDP - Sebastian Hartmann, Till Steffen and Konstantin Kuhle - in the commission set up by the Bundestag to reform electoral law and modernize parliamentary work.

They published it on Wednesday in a name article in the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung".

With their initiative, "oversized, non-functional Bundestags are excluded," said Hartmann on Wednesday in Berlin.

Calculation based on second votes

According to the proposal, the number of mandates each party is entitled to in a federal state should be calculated on the basis of the second votes - called list votes by the chairmen.

If she achieves more constituency mandates with the first vote - the chairmen are now talking about personal votes - then the candidates with the worst personal vote results in the country will get nothing.

So far they have been allowed to keep these as overhang mandates, the other parties receive compensatory mandates in return.

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However, the corresponding constituency will still be represented in the Bundestag.

Because with a second first vote, the so-called substitute vote, the voters can indicate a second preference.

The substitute vote cast for the direct candidate who does not get a chance will then be added to this candidate.

The constituency mandate is then given to the person who receives the most votes in the constituency.

dpa