Trench selection system

The trench voting system is an electoral system in which several voting procedures are used side by side and without offset against each other (parallel election without compensation, therefore called parallel voting in English ). Most of the time in the ditch electoral system, some of the seats are allocated in one-person constituencies and the other according to the principle of proportional representation . Two votes do not necessarily have to be cast, the only decisive factor is that there are two completely separate seat allocation procedures .

The term comes from the fact that in the ditch voting system (unlike the current German electoral system) the direct mandates are not counted towards the list mandates . From this point of view, there is a gap between the two ways of getting into parliament.

In the spring of 2019, the CDU politician Günter Krings proposed a trench election system to avoid an ever-growing German Bundestag . At the end of 2019, 24  members of the Bundestag of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group took up the idea again.

application

The system is used in a number of countries (unless otherwise noted, in a combination of majority voting in one-person constituencies and proportional representation).

Europe

• 1990 and 2009 in Bulgaria
• 1992 and 1995 in Croatia for the election of the House of Representatives
• in Lithuania in the election of parliament (majority election with runoff and proportional representation)
• 1993 to 2003 and again since 2016 in the Russian Federation in the elections to the Duma .
• since 2012 in the Ukraine in parliamentary elections (majority election without runoff and proportional representation)
• The trench voting system has also been in place in Italy since the end of 2017 .

Africa

• in Guinea at the election of the National Assembly
• since 2014 in Libya in the election of the Council of Representatives
• in Niger at the election of the National Assembly
• in the Seychelles at the election of the National Assembly

America

• in Guatemala in the election of Congress
• in Mexico in the election of the two houses of Congress

Asia

• in Armenia in the election of the National Assembly
• in Azerbaijan at the election of the National Assembly (majority vote with runoff and proportional representation)
• in Taiwan for the election of the legislative yuan (until 2004: non-transferable individual votes and proportional representation)
• in Georgia at the election of parliament
• in Hong Kong in the election of the Legislative Council
• in Japan in the election of the lower house and upper house ( non-transferable individual votes and proportional representation)
• in Macau in the election of the Legislative Assembly
• In Nepal , a trench voting system was first used in the 2008 constituent assembly election .
• in Palestine in the election of the Palestinian Legislative Council (most recently 2006)
• in the Philippines in the election of the House of Representatives
• in South Korea in the election of the National Assembly
• since 2007 in Thailand in the election for the House of Representatives (375 seats by majority vote; 125 seats by proportional representation)

literature

• Michael Schmid: Wahlsysteme und Wahltypen , VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften 2006, ISBN 978-3-531-14890-8 .

supporting documents

1. ↑ Christoph Seils : The new right to vote and the crux with the overhang mandates. In: bpb.de 207. June 18, 2013, accessed on September 18, 2016 . 
2. ↑ Debate about new suffrage: Union fights for trench voting system. In: Tagesschau.de . December 27, 2019, accessed May 6, 2020 . 
3. ^ Gesine Dornblüth : Duma election in Russia: Small losses for democratic paint. In: Deutschlandfunk broadcast “Europe today”. April 24, 2016, accessed November 12, 2019 . 
4. ^ Fida Nasrallah: How the electrical system works . In: UNMIN Newspaper: Issue 5 Feb / March 2008. (PDF) (No longer available online.) P. 3 , formerly in the original ; accessed on September 18, 2016 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )