source: http://wap.business-standard.com/storyp ... ono=180235Top German court orders overhaul of election law
Press Trust of India/Berlin - Jul 26,2012 10:09 AM
Germany's highest court has declared that the country's reformed electoral law introduced by Chancellor Angela Merkel was unconstitutional and ordered for it to be overhauled before the next general election next year.
The Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe yesterday ruled that the reformed parliamentary electoral law was unconstitutional as it "violated the basic principles of equality and constitutionally-guaranteed equal chances for all parties".
The court ordered the government to put in place a new electoral law before the next parliamentary election in in 2013.
The ruling, which follows a judgement in 2008 when the court said the system could give an advantage to bigger parties, makes clear last year's changes left a system that was still at odds with the Constitution.
The court delivered its verdict on petitions filed by the parliamentary groups of the opposition Social Democratic Party and the Green party as well as by over 3,000 citizens, who complained that their basic rights were violated and they were unfairly disadvantaged by the law.
At the centre of the dispute was the so-called "overhang mandates", additional seats a party can get if it wins more direct seats than the number of seats it is entitled to on the basis of the percentage of second votes cast for it.
Under Germany's voting system of proportional representation, each voter casts two votes -- one for the candidate of a constituency and the second for the party.
Major political parties traditionally benefited from the "overhang" seats and used them to bolster their parliamentary majority.
Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has been a main beneficiary and it has 24 "overhang" seats in the current Bundestag.
The electoral law was reformed and passed by the Bundestag in November last year solely with the support of the ruling coalition.
Delivering yesterday's verdict, President of the Constitutional Court Andreas Vosskuehle said in view of the history of the new electoral law, the court sees no possibility to accept the unconstitutional situation once again for a transitional period.
The opposition parties hailed the verdict as a major blow for Merkel's coalition government.
source: http://jurist.org/paperchase/2012/07/ge ... tional.phpWednesday, July 25, 2012
Germany Constitutional Court rules national election law unconstitutional
Dan Taglioli at 11:16 AM ET
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[JURIST] The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany [official website, in German] on Wednesday invalidated the country's election law [judgment, in German] as unconstitutional. Germany has a complex system that sometimes creates extra "overhang" parliamentary seats that benefit the larger parties, a result the court ruled violates constitutional guarantees [Reuters report] of citizens' rights to take part in direct, free and equal elections. Each German voter can cast two ballots, one for a specific constituency candidate and a second for a particular party, and the the peculiar overhang result occurs when a party wins more direct seats in a constituency than it would theoretically get according to the percentage of second votes. The ruling Christian Democrats (CDU) of Chancellor Angela Merkel [BBC profile] made changes to the system that would further benefit larger parties like the CDU and its sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), which together won 24 overhang seats in 2009. Opposition parties the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens and over 3,000 citizens challenged the election law, which was altered last year without obtaining the traditional cross-party consensus and over objections from opposition parties.
Earlier this month the court heard arguments [JURIST report] over a claim brought in opposition to the 500 billion euro (USD $632 billion) European Stability Mechanism (ESM) [text, PDF]. In June the court ruled [JURIST report] that the German Bundestag has the right to be heard on the European financial crisis, holding in a case initiated by the Green party that Merkel failed to notify the parliament early enough about plans for the ESM regarding its sister party in Austria. Although that decision did not have any effect on the 500 billion euro ESM, it increased the parliament's rights by requiring the chancellor's government to provide notice to the parliament as early as possible in the future. A previous ruling that gave the parliament similar rights over matter concerning the EU was issued in February. The country's constitutional court held [JURIST report] that the use of a parliamentary subcommittee to fast-track decisions related to eurozone bailouts is unconstitutional, instead requiring the entire Bundestag to overview such decisions. In September the court ruled [JURIST report] that the parliament did not unconstitutionally impair its own ability to adopt and control the nation's budget, nor did it infringe on the budget autonomy of future parliaments.
I think this demonstrates nicely how hilariously incompetent and counter-democratic my current government is.
Though you have to admire Merkel for staying in power despite her government going from one debacle to the next.The bigger question (well, the above is more of a universal constant than an answer to an important question, anyways) is: what should we do now? With no historical or legal constraints other than that we need to elect aprox. 600 MdBs next year, this would be an oportune moment to design a new electoral system from the ground up.
IMHO the ideas behind our dual election law are good. Though one has to question whether the Bundesrat (our "upper chamber") isn't enough to represent the states. Going to an entirely proprotional electoral system would be the easiest and quickest fix. It would also mean parties could no more circumvent the 5% cut-off by getting "direct" seats.
Why not elect local committees, that send people to higher layers of committees, up to the central committee... oh, wait.
