The Bundestag has voted in favour of the controversial reform of the electoral law, which is intended to reduce the size of parliament. 400 MPs voted in favour, 261 against, 23 abstained. The project has met with fierce criticism, especially from the CSU and the Left Party.
With the reform, the Bundestag, which has grown to 736 members, is to be permanently reduced to 630 seats from the next election. This is to be achieved by completely dispensing with overhang and balancing mandates.
Overhang mandates arise when a party wins more seats in the Bundestag via direct mandates than it would be entitled to according to the second vote result. It is allowed to keep these seats, the other parties receive balancing mandates in return. According to the new rules, it could happen in the future that a candidate wins his constituency directly, but still does not move into the Bundestag.
This enrages the CSU in particular. In addition, according to the traffic light draft, a strict five-percent clause should apply. The so-called basic mandate clause is omitted. So far, it has led to parties entering the Bundestag in the strength of their second vote result even if they were below five percent but won at least three direct mandates. The Left Party benefited from this in the 2021 election. If the clause is deleted, this could, depending on the election result, also have consequences for the Bavarian regional party CSU in the future.
In the final heated debate on Friday, politicians of the traffic light parties accused the Union of a lack of willingness to change. The domestic policy spokesman of the SPD parliamentary group, Sebastian Hartmann, said on Friday before the planned vote that the aim of the project was "a simple, comprehensible electoral law".
CSU and Left Party, on the other hand,
The project is strictly rejected by the Union and the Left Party. CSU land group leader Alexander Dobrindt said the plan was aimed at pushing the Left out of parliament and questioning "the CSU's right to exist." "You are making a reform for yourself" to cement the "power claim of the traffic lights," he accused Hartmann.
Former Bundestag presidents Wolfgang Schäuble and Rita Süssmuth (both CDU) have criticised the planned reform of the electoral law. The new electoral law creates a system "that is designed to deceive and disappoint the voter," Schäuble told the magazine "Der Spiegel". He justified this criticism with the fact that in the future not every first-placed constituency candidate can expect to actually get a seat in the Bundestag. "The concept of the traffic light coalition for electoral reform is constitutionally and politically problematic," said Schäuble.