Compensation mandate

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Compensation mandates serve to compensate for the overhang mandates that come about in certain electoral systems in such a way that other parties who have received no or fewer overhang mandates are not disadvantaged. This ensures that the parties are represented in parliament according to their share of the second vote (i.e. according to the proportional representation).

Procedure

Overhang seats can arise if the seats are awarded both in a majority election (via direct seats ) and in a proportional representation (via party lists ). This process of so-called personalized proportional representation is used, for example, in elections to the German Bundestag , in some federal states in state elections and sometimes in local elections .

The procedure for allocating compensatory mandates in order to compensate for the overhang mandates and the resulting disproportion of seats in parliament is very different and is only carried out in some German federal states. In Lower Saxony, for example, double the number of overhang seats is added to the original number of seats to be allocated. Then all the calculations are repeated as if the sum were the original number of seats. This is intended to approximately restore the balance of power.

When using the improper sub-location selection , z. B. in Baden-Württemberg , compensatory seats are created by comparing the overall result of a list in an overall municipality area and the resulting entitlement of your list to seats of the committee to be elected and the results of your candidates for the electoral district they represent ( suburb or residential district ) .

German Bundestag

In the Bundestag elections from 1949 to 2009 there were no compensatory mandates, therefore (and due to the threshold clause ) the distribution of seats in the Bundestag did not necessarily correspond to the percentage distribution of second votes.

A modified procedure for allocating seats in the Bundestag has been in effect since December 2011. In July 2012 the Federal Constitutional Court declared this procedure to be ineffective. The Second Senate gave its decision constitutional challenges parliamentary groups of the SPD and Greens held, and more than 3,000 citizens.

In October 2012, the government ( CDU , CSU and FDP ) and parts of the opposition ( SPD and Greens ) in the Bundestag finally agreed to introduce compensatory mandates for the Bundestag from the 2013 Bundestag election. The reform of the electoral law was decided in the Bundestag on February 21, 2013 and implemented by adapting Section 6 of the Federal Electoral Act.

The 2013 election ultimately resulted in four overhang mandates for the CDU. Due to the extensive regulation of the compensation, however, it was not the CDU overhang mandates that determined the overall size, but the number of seats in the CSU, so that the other parties also received a total of 29 compensation mandates.

The regulation of the equalization - not the equalization per se - and the associated risk of a strong inflation of the number of seats was already criticized in the legislative process. The Taxpayers Germany demanded after the elections in 2013 and ahead of the election in 2017 because of the expected cost increases and Bürokratisierungen the abolition of the compensatory mandates and the cap on the number of deputies from 630 for the general election in 2017 .

Compensation mandates in previous federal elections
Bundestag election AfD CDU CSU FDP Green left SPD total
2017 11 0 0 15th 10 10 19th 65
2013 0 13 0 0 2 4th 10 29

Web links

Wiktionary: Compensation mandate  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ In the elections of 1965 , 1969 , 1972 and 1976 there were no overhang seats.
  2. ↑ BVerfG, judgment of July 25, 2012, Az. 2 BvF 3/11 (+ 2 BvR 2670/11 + 2 BvE 9/11), BVerfGE 131, 316 - Land lists
  3. ^ Karlsruhe judges declare voting rights unconstitutional. In: sueddeutsche.de
  4. ↑ Overhangs are "neutralized". In: n-tv.de
  5. ↑ Broad majority for reform ( memento from June 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: tagesschau.de
  6. ↑ Why the new Bundestag has 631 members. In: bundestag.de
  7. ↑ A new type of overhang mandate in the new federal election system. In: Wahlrecht.de
  8. ↑ Mostly agree with the reform of the electoral law. In: bundestag.de
  9. ^ Petition Bund der Steuerpayers Deutschland e. V .: No to an XXL Bundestag! In: change.org , accessed January 11, 2017
  10. ↑ To compensate for 46 overhang mandates (36 CDU , 7 CSU , 3 SPD )
  11. ↑ a b The party was below the 5% hurdle and did not move into the Bundestag.
  12. ↑ To compensate for 4 overhang mandates (4 CDU )