Suchergebnisse

Following a long lasting debate about the electoral law, the new electoral law of the Federal Republic of Germany was passed on May 3rd 2013 which contains as an important element adjustment seats. The starting point of the debate was a judgment of the German Supreme Court in 2008 which had declared the phenomenon of the so called negative voting weight unconstitutional. Every future reform of the electoral system will be evaluated according to the extent it contains a solution of this problem. In order to evaluate which institutional arrangements are permissible, an argument is made which forms of negative voting weight have to be judged as normatively problematic and which forms can be considered as harmless. Adapted from the source document.

"About half of German voters have a correct understanding of the German electoral system. The other half incorrectly believes that either the first vote or that the first and second vote together are decisive for the distribution of seats. As a consequence of this ignorance concerning the mode of operation of the German electoral system, part of the electorate casts their vote in a manner inconsistent with their intentions. Some observed cases of strategic voting, i.e. when voters deviate from their 'true' preference with their first or second vote, can obviously be traced back to this ignorance of the electoral system. In this sense in the Federal election of 2013, a non-negligible part of the supporters of the CDU/CSU voted with their second vote for the FDP under the wrong assumption that this vote was not important for the distribution of seats. At any rate this behavior has caused the CDU/CSU to suffer a loss of seats, possibly it is even responsible for the loss of the absolute majority of seats." (author's abstract)

Der Autor zeigt in seinem Beitrag zum Wahlsystem von Baden-Württemberg, dass und wie institutionelle Besonderheiten des Wahlsystems das Endergebnis von Wahlen beeinflussen. Die wichtigste Besonderheit in Baden-Württemberg besteht darin, dass der Wähler nur eine Stimme hat, nämlich die für den Direktkandidaten im Wahlkreis. Dennoch ist das Wahlsystem ein Verhältniswahlsystem, denn für die Sitzverteilung im Ganzen ist der Anteil der Stimmen, den die Parteien über alle Wahlkreise hinweg gesammelt haben, maßgeblich. Die zweite Besonderheit resultiert aus dieser ersten: Um eine angemessene Repräsentation der einzelnen Regionen bzw. Regierungsbezirke im Parlament zu gewährleisten, erfolgt das Verfahren der Sitzverteilung zweistufig. Im ersten Schritt auf der Ebene des Landes, im zweiten auf der der Regierungsbezirke. Durch die Stimmauszählung auf der Ebene der vier Regierungsbezirke können im Endergebnis auftretende "Überhangmandate" die Parteienrepräsentanz verändern und gegebenenfalls sogar trotz Ausgleichmandaten die Mehrheitsverhältnisse drehen. Gerade in Baden-Württemberg besteht ein solch deutlicher Verzerrungseffekt zugunsten der größten Partei, der sich bei zunehmender Parteienzersplitterung verstärkt. (ICA2)

In September 2011 the new German electoral law was passed. From the very beginning the debate on the topic was fundamentally flawed, since the parties could not even agree on which problem was to be solved by the new law. While the governing coalition stuck to a rather narrow interpretation of the parliamentary mandate, limiting their ambitions to eliminating the so called negative voting weight, a number of arguments suggest an extended interpretation of the constitutional court's judgments in the sense that surplus mandates ought to be abolished altogether. Surplus mandates cause negative voting weights, while the linking of party lists impedes this effect. The separation of lists as provided for by the new law is thus an inappropriate solution of the problem. It can be tackled more adequately by eliminating the surplus mandates altogether. Furthermore, irrespective of the constitutional review of surplus mandates, they are a serious problem for democracy. Adapted from the source document.