False part choice

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The false choice of suburbs is a special regulation in the municipal electoral law of Baden-Württemberg , which is intended to ensure sufficient and guaranteed representation of individual suburbs (called residential districts) in the municipal council . A sub-town or several sub-towns form a residential district, for which a separate sub-list is created, which, however, can be selected by all voters in the entire community. The term “fake” is derived from this, with a “real” suburb choice, each suburb / residential district could only choose its own representative. This guarantees the individual residential districts a certain number of seats on the municipal council.

Regardless of the choice of part of the town , there is the possibility in Baden-Württemberg of having local councils elected through a local constitution . If at the same time a fake suburb election is carried out, local councils elected in the suburb have the right to participate in the local council in an advisory capacity. If a village consists of several districts, a spurious selection of suburbs can also be carried out for the local council.

mode

The bogus choice of part of town is regulated in the municipal code of Baden-Württemberg. The municipality stipulates in its main statute whether a spurious partial location is chosen. If this is the case, residential districts are formed from one or more spatially separate districts, to which the municipal council seats are divided according to the population. In nominations, candidates must be listed separately according to their residential district, whereby candidacies are only possible on the partial list of the residential district in which the applicant lives. In residential districts in which one to three municipal councilors are to be elected, one more candidate may run on the nomination; in residential districts in which more than three municipal councilors are elected, this is also the upper limit for the applicants per nomination.

The choice of part of town is spurious in that all voters vote on all applicants. Each voter may only choose as many applicants from each residential district as there are local councils to elect for this residential district. Since accumulation is allowed in Baden-Württemberg, i.e. the allocation of up to three votes to an applicant, a voter can give up to three times the number of votes to candidates from a residential district, as long as he does not exceed the total number of votes for this residential district. When variegating , i.e. choosing applicants from different nominations, the voter must note that even then he is no longer allowed to choose applicants from a residential area.

The election results have been calculated using the Sainte-Laguë method since the 2014 local elections , and the D'Hondt method was used until the 2009 election . First of all, the proportion of seats allocated to each nomination is determined for each residential district. In addition, the number of seats in the entire municipality is determined which are allotted to the nomination. In most cases, the latter number for at least one nomination is lower than the sum of the seats that accrue in the individual residential districts, which then receives overhang seats . If this is the case, the total number of seats is increased by means of compensatory mandates until all sums are reached. As a result, the number of seats on the municipal council can double the number stipulated by law. On average, this increase is three in the municipalities that use a false choice of suburbs.

history

The bogus choice of suburbs was made possible in 1953 by the constitution of the newly formed state of Baden-Württemberg , which regulated in Article 72 that suburbs could be guaranteed representation in the municipal council by means of municipal statutes. This was implemented by the municipal code for Baden-Württemberg , introduced in 1955 , which defines the false choice of part of town in Section 27.

The false choice of suburbs in 1972 in the course of the regional reform in Baden-Württemberg became particularly important , as some previously independent municipalities feared that after losing their independence as suburbs they would no longer have enough influence on local politics in the larger or central municipality . In many cases it was therefore contractually stipulated that the false choice of part of the town had to be included in the main statute of the municipality.

The number of municipalities with a false choice of part of town has been falling again since the 1970s. The fake suburbs were abolished in 2013 in Schwäbisch Hall and Herrenberg, among others .

Development of the number of municipalities with an incorrect choice of part of town
choice Number of municipalities Municipalities with a false choice of part of town Number of residential districts
number percent
1975 1110 717 64.6 not known
1980 1110 706 63.6 not known
1984 1110 693 62.4 3931
1989 1110 680 61.3 3149
1994 1110 638 57.5 2970
1999 1110 596 53.7 2745
2004 1110 537 48.4 2490
2009 1101 483 43.9 2231
2014 1101 438 39.8 2030
2019 1110 not yet known

Advantages and disadvantages

The most important advantage of the false choice of suburbs is that it ensures that as many municipal councils come from each suburb as corresponds to its number of inhabitants. Opponents object that minority rights are only apparently better protected in this way than without them. Because all voters of the municipality vote on the representatives of the suburbs, candidates can also be elected who do not represent a majority within their suburb. In larger municipalities or cities, decisions were often made along parliamentary groups, and individual representatives of a sub-town had little weight.

The main disadvantage of spurious sub-location selection is the complicated procedure. This is seen as the reason for the lower voter turnout in communities with a bogus suburb, and the proportion of invalid votes is higher. In addition, many voters waived part of the votes they were entitled to so as not to vote invalid. Another disadvantage is the larger number of municipal council seats due to compensation mandates.

A city council poll in 2007 came to the result that "in the first election after the abolition of the false suburbs [...] 21% of the municipalities did not represent one residential district and 24% of the municipalities did not represent two or more residential districts in the municipal council [, therefore] in 55% of all cases [...] all residential districts or suburbs were still represented in the municipal council ”.

literature

  • State Center for Civic Education Baden-Württemberg (Ed.): The municipal code for Baden-Württemberg . In: Taschenbuch Baden-Württemberg. Laws - data - analysis . Stuttgart 1999, pp. 291-392.
  • Jürgen Fleckenstein: The local electoral system . In: Handbuch Kommunalpolitik , Stuttgart 2014.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Appendix 2 to SV no. 1. to 214/13 , ratsinfo.schwaebischhall.de: Information on the referendum on the bogus suburb election on Sunday, September 22, 2013 - Draft , 1. What is the bogus suburb election
  2. ↑ a b c Dejure.org : Baden-Württemberg, municipal regulations in the version of July 24, 2000, last amended by law of June 19, 2018, accessed October 25, 2019
  3. ↑ How do you vote? , State Center for Civic Education Baden-Wuerttemberg, municipal election 2019, accessed October 25, 2019
  4. ^ Constitution of the State of Baden-Württemberg in the version from 1953, accessed October 25, 2019
  5. ^ Municipal code for Baden-Württemberg in the version from 1955, accessed October 25, 2019
  6. ↑ False sub-locations abolished , Holger Ströbel, Schwäbisch Haller Tagblatt ( Südwest Presse ), July 26, 2013, accessed October 25, 2019
  7. ↑ Now the choice is different , Anja Tröster, “ Stuttgarter Zeitung ”, September 23, 2013, accessed October 25, 2019
  8. ↑ Fake partial local elections / repeal of the local constitution , request to the Ministry of the Interior and statement, February 2, 2015, accessed October 25, 2019
  9. ↑ Appendix 2 to SV no. 1. to 214/13 ratsinfo.schwaebischhall.de: Information on the referendum on the bogus local election on Sunday, September 22, 2013 - draft , III. Arguments for the abolition of the false choice of suburbs, 2.… leads to an unequal weighting of votes.
  10. ↑ Appendix 2 to SV no. 1. to 214/13 ratsinfo.schwaebischhall.de: Information on the referendum on the bogus suburb election on Sunday, September 22, 2013 - draft , 5. Experience with the abolition of the bogus suburb election
  11. ↑ Badische-zeitung.de , June 7, 2014: Numbers speak against "fake"
  12. ↑ State Center for Political Education Baden-Württemberg , Kommunalwahl-bw.de: The Unechte Teilortswahl and its problems
  13. ↑ Appendix 2 to SV no. 1. to 214/13 ratsinfo.schwaebischhall.de: Information on the referendum on the bogus suburb election on Sunday, September 22, 2013 - draft , 5. Experience with the abolition of the bogus suburb election