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The debate about the new voting law reaches the Federal Constitutional Court. The Union and the Left see themselves disadvantaged by the reform. The overhang mandates are about to end.
Karlsruhe – A year and a half before the expected next federal election, the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe continued to negotiate on Wednesday (April 24) about which electoral law will be used in 2025. The traffic light coalition pushed through a reform last year – but the Union and the Left are resisting this. They are particularly affected by the changes.
On Wednesday it was initially about the so-called second vote coverage. In the future, the seats in the Bundestag should be allocated entirely based on the majority of the second votes. Until the reform there were overhang mandates. These accrued if a party won more constituencies than the number of seats it had based on the second vote.
In the past, the CSU, which only runs in Bavaria and was able to win many of its constituencies with direct mandates, often benefited from this. So she got few second votes nationwide, but she won the constituencies in Bavaria. In order to keep the distribution of seats fair, other parties were given compensatory mandates. So the Bundestag became bigger and bigger – which is what the reform is supposed to stop. It caps the number of MPs at 630.
Compensatory mandates lead to unequal treatment – CSU sees new electoral law as too complicated
But that would lead to unequal treatment, the Union representatives argued in court. “Parties that are particularly broadly rooted in the area” and have a lot of first votes would be hit particularly hard, said the representative of the CSU-led Bavarian state government, Markus Möstl.
For the CSU, their representative, Kyrill-Alexander Schwarz, criticized the fact that in the future the first vote would no longer be a real election, but simply a “pre-selection”. This is difficult to understand: “The right to vote turns away from a mechanism that was completely simple and easy to understand.”
Basic mandate clause as the next point of contention – the left is particularly affected
Constituencies are “not small political communities,” said Bundestag representative Christoph Möllers. Members of the Bundestag are representatives of the entire people. On behalf of the federal government, its representative Sophie Schönberger argued that in the future parties would simply be treated according to their second vote result – it was not clear where there was an inequality. “It is not the case that regionally successful parties are disadvantaged,” said Schönberger. “On the contrary.”
Later on Wednesday the topic of the basic mandate clause should be discussed. This too will no longer apply in the new electoral law. Thanks to this clause, parties have so far entered the Bundestag on the strength of their second vote result even if they failed to pass the five percent threshold but won at least three direct mandates. In 2021, this benefited the Left, which still entered the Bundestag as a parliamentary group with just under five percent of the second votes. It is now just a group because some left-wing MPs have joined the new alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) changed.
With Andreas Scheuer and Stefan Müller, the CSU loses two seats in the Bundestag
After Andreas Scheuer unexpectedly withdrew from the Bundestag, Stefan Müller will also say goodbye to business in Berlin in May. The CSU politician is resigning his mandate to become President of the Bavarian Cooperative Association. The special feature for the CSU: Due to the new overhang mandate regulation, no new MPs will replace the two people who are leaving.
The Left Party and its former parliamentary group also turned to the court, as did the Bavarian state government, the CSU and 195 members of the Union parliamentary group in the Bundestag, as well as left-wing MPs and more than 4,000 private individuals, brought together by the More Democracy association.
The trial began on Tuesday. A verdict is not expected to be made this week. Representatives of the parliamentary groups expected it in a few months, before or shortly after the parliamentary summer break. There isn't much time left until the next federal election. (afp/SiSchr)
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