German
Bundestag, September 18, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/177, pp. 22326-22327.
Thank
you. – Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.
111
members, thus almost every fifth, sit in this house with an overhang or
compensatory [Ausgleichs] mandate.
And after 24 reform attempts in 18 legislative periods, an integration of the
element of direct election into the leading principle of proportional election
has not succeeded.
Much
of the talk of election law reform in this legislative period is of a
non-binding tenor. It ultimately comes out as feared by the hundred public law
scholars: The shirt of the guaranteed vested interests is closer to them than
the coat of the commonwealth.
Carsten Schneider (SPD): Ridiculous!
Now
we are one year away from the next election, a point in time at which, with
some legal assurance, an authentic reform is scarcely still possible.
Therefore, it is not even to be attempted. The government comes around on
Tuesday with a print to be deliberated on in the first reading for 40 minutes;
as in all other political fields, right honorable ladies and gentlemen, a cobbled
up piece of work. There can be no talk whatsoever of reform.
The
299 constituencies shall be reduced to 280. You do not want to do that on the
level but sometime later. At the same time, a reform commission shall be set up
which hopefully achieves something; since your proposal would not in any way be
effective. Given the CSU wins an additional overhang mandate vis-à-vis the 2017
election, the desired effect of a shrinkage would be counteracted by this
result alone.
Then
there is the irritating rule that up to three overhang mandates per state list
are not to be compensated. That means: In the future, overhang mandates again
arising, the party which achieves them, diverging from the result of the
proportional election, procures additional mandates. This advantage is
naturally only for the large parties, thus only those which can achieve
overhang mandates. Precisely that was to have been abolished as being
unconstitutional by the election law reform of 2013.
And
how so this backwards flip? It might be supposed it is about a Lex CSU. Since in
2017, the CSU with its seven overhang mandates, had released 108 compensatory
mandates. That was for the participants too many to be left as it was. If three
of them are made non-compensatory, the CSU with the same election results as in
2017, would release only 62 compensatory mandates. Ladies and gentlemen, that
is a crazy reform result for a smaller future Bundestag.
Finally,
overhang direct mandates shall supplant list mandates of the same party in
other states. No voter in Germany will ever understand the pertinent
calculation.
The
proposal of the three small parties was dealt with here in July and is no
alternative, although powerfully solicited and appraised as a great deed in the
media. 50 fewer constituencies in parallel with an increase of the prescribed
number of mandates: That in fact would not remain ineffective but the core
problem of overhang and compensatory mandates will generally not be solved.
There
remains the authentic alternative of the AfD. In no Federal state may parties
obtain more direct mandates than the list mandates due them after the second
vote. By this means is produced the result that only direct candidates with the
strongest vote catch the train – a democratic normality which thus certainly
cannot be unconstitutional. The inconsiderable number who thereby do not catch
the train will not be punished, but only not rewarded.
Think
it over: To confer direct mandates with simply a relative majority is unusual.
At the local level, no one has the idea of electing an Oberbürgermeister with a relative majority.
Mahmut Özdemir (SPD): The CDU in
Nordrhein-Westfalen!
And
further consider: The average holder of a list mandate is clearly backed up by more votes
than the average one directly elected. Colleague Amthor in this
place in fact asserted the opposite. This was, nevertheless, demonstrably false.
If
it had been desired, an orderly reform in the prescribed time might have been
agreed upon. It was, nevertheless, not desired and in fact all the other
parties did not want it – with the exception of the AfD.
Hearty
thanks.
[trans: tem]
