Traffic light proposal for electoral reform: Not like this!

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Plenary session of the Bundestag

Photo: Achille Abboud / IMAGO

736 MPs currently sit in the Bundestag.

Some are of the opinion that a country like Germany can easily tolerate so many people's representatives in its highest legislative body.

However, the federal election law only provides for 598 MPs, i.e. two for each of the 299 current constituencies.

In day-to-day operations, Parliament has long since reached the limits of its ability to work.

It is correct that the factions of the traffic light coalition are now picking up the pace to reform the electoral law and thus reduce the size of the Bundestag.

Changes have been discussed for years, but agreement on a really big hit has not been reached to this day, the mini-reform from summer 2020 had more of a cosmetic effect.

That was the only reason why the then coalition partners Union and SPD agreed on it.

What the traffic light groups are now proposing would be a real reform: it would limit the Bundestag to 598 seats.

The problem is that the SPD, Greens and FDP plan breaks with a basic principle of direct elections in Germany.

In all likelihood, the traffic light concept would ultimately mean that not every MP who won his or her constituency with the majority of the first votes would get into parliament.

Namely, when a party in a federal state wins more mandates through the first vote than it is entitled to after the second vote.

In this case, the following would happen: The party only gets as many MPs as it is entitled to based on the second vote.

Those mandates that were won with a particularly low proportion of the first vote would be cut off downwards.

The narrower a victory, the greater the risk that a candidate will go away empty-handed.

CSU rightly complains

The fact that the CSU in particular would suffer from such a model is no argument for this, even if the Christian Socialists are particularly unpopular outside of the Free State and especially in the traffic light camp: The CSU should continue to win most constituencies directly in Bavaria in the future, although she performs significantly worse on the second voice.

In Munich, people are already threatening to move to Karlsruhe if the traffic light goes it alone.

In any case, the CSU is right to complain.

Actually, however, the government factions should also come to the conclusion that the idea presented would be ignoring part of the will of the voters.

It is therefore urgently advisable, as originally planned, to work on a more suitable model within the framework of the electoral law commission.

And here, too, you end up back with the CSU: In recent years, the party has rejected everything on the subject of electoral law reform that would ultimately cost it even one mandate.

The former Union faction leader Ralph Brinkhaus from the CDU can sing a song about it, whose efforts in 2020 also failed because of his MPs from Bavaria.

The Christian Socialists in particular need to move

In order to achieve a real reform of the electoral law, the CSU, in particular, must move, which in any case enjoys a special position in the German party system.

Your model of a rigid electoral law, which you presented together with the CDU, is just as unsuitable as that of the traffic light.

It is probably as the then outgoing and long-standing President of the Bundestag Wolfgang Schäuble said in October 2021 in the constitutive session of the current parliament: "An electoral law reform that deserves its name has not become any easier." The government and opposition factions should nevertheless take to heart what the CDU politician added on the subject of electoral law reform: "And yet: it obviously does not tolerate any delay."