BERLIN. The AfD was happy with that Judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court on the right to vote shown“In the future, there will only be 630 members of parliament; with their proposal, the AfD faction wanted to have only 598 members in the German Bundestag and thus strengthen decision-making in parliament and reduce costs for taxpayers, which have been rising for decades,” said the chairman of the AfD faction in the Bundestag’s electoral rights committee, Albrecht Glaser.
The AfD itself had advocated limiting the number of MPs to 598, as was also required by the electoral law before the traffic light coalition changed it last year. There are now 630 MPs planned. However, the number of members of the Bundestag recently stood at 733 due to so-called overhang and compensatory mandates. This makes it the largest freely elected national parliament in the world.
The AfD is divided
AfD man Glaser warned that the Union could reverse the reform if it were to win the election. “If the CDU and CSU emerge as strong winners in the upcoming federal elections, there are fears that their party representatives will once again botch the electoral reform in such a way that taxpayers will experience huge cost increases and the Bundestag’s ability to function will suffer.”
However, Glaser also encountered criticism within the party. The deputy leader of the Thuringian AfD, Torben Braga, accused his party colleagues in the Bundestag of defending reforms “the votes in the constituency are devalued and the power of the parties is expanded.” Braga warned that in the new states there would be an above-average number of constituencies in which no direct candidate would be eligible in the future. “What are the East German members of the AfD actually saying in the Bundestag? about the group’s position on this? Are you even interested in this?’ said the Thuringian indignantly.
Albrecht Glaser and the @AfDimBundestag welcome a reform of the electoral law that devalues the votes in the constituencies and increases the power of the parties. This positioning is a mistake. It is simply absurd to disguise this with a so-called ‘help for the taxpayers’. https://t.co/FQiK8hpNCh
— Torben Braga (@torben_braga) July 30, 2024
Karlsruhe slows down the traffic light coalition at a central point
The Traffic Light Coalition made important changes to the voting law on two points last year. In future, there will be no more compensatory mandates in the event that a party obtains significantly more direct mandates than it is entitled to based on the result of the second vote. This was confirmed by the Karlsruhe judges on Tuesday and will mean that in future not all constituencies will be filled by a representative.
Karlsruhe, on the other hand, has reversed the abolition of the so-called basic mandate clause. This stipulates that parties that win three direct mandates will enter the Bundestag with their second vote, even if they are below the five percent threshold. The Left Party benefited from this in the last elections. But the CSU could also benefit from this, because it often narrowly crosses the threshold in national elections.
Merz and Söder want to undo the changes
CSU boss Markus Söder was correspondingly enthusiastic about the decision. “A success for Bavaria and a blow to the traffic light: the electoral reform violates the Basic Law with the deleted basic mandate clause,” the Bavarian premier wrote on the short message service X. “The attempted election manipulation of the traffic light has been exposed and rejected.”
Success for Bavaria and a blow to the traffic lights: The #Electoral law reform violates the basic law with the deleted basic mandate clause. The traffic light goes out again with a law earlier #Federal Constitutional Court. We sued and were right on the core issues…
— Markus Söder (@Markus_Soeder) July 30, 2024
However, Söder regretted that in the future not every constituency will be represented by a directly elected representative. A future government involving the CDU and CSU will change this, Söder announced. “This is a coalition condition for the next federal government.”
Left Party: The government wanted to weaken the opposition
CDU leader Friedrich Merz was also pleased with the verdict in Karlsruhe. A reduction in the size of the Bundestag is urgently needed. “With this ruling, the Federal Constitutional Court has partially declared the reform of the traffic light electoral law unconstitutional within the meaning of our lawsuit,” he wrote on
A reduction in the size of the Bundestag is urgently needed. With the verdict that has done that #BVerfG the #Electoral law reform the #Traffic light partially ruled unconstitutional for the purposes of our lawsuit. The traffic light’s attempt to eliminate political competitors who exercise the right to vote…
— Friedrich Merz (@_FriedrichMerz) July 30, 2024
Left Party leader Janine Wissler spoke of a “blow to the traffic lights that the opposition wanted to weaken through voting rights”. It is good that Karlsruhe has reintroduced the fundamental mandate clause. (ho)