Electoral Reform committee  It's a part of the political culture of the party, especially with the Greens, as I mentioned, who use the lists not only for alternating women and men but also [Inaudible--Editor] for elderly people or people with ethnic backgrounds, or for immigrants, for example.

Electoral Reform committee  It depends on the parties.

Electoral Reform committee  You have to keep in mind that all of these changes are minor changes in comparison to what you have to decide. It was never a change between one type of system and another. It was always a change within the proportional system, and mostly within the mixed member proportional sy

Electoral Reform committee  —the German people are content with their system.

Electoral Reform committee  Yes, you cited Lijphart and his concept of consensus democracies. The political culture in Germany is really consensus oriented. Most laws in the Bundestag are passed with a great majority from most parties. It's seldom case that the majority of the governing coalition passes a l

Electoral Reform committee  That is one of the most popular arguments against proportional systems, but it is certainly not true for Germany. We have very stable governments. For example, Kohl reigned for 16 years, Schröder for 7 years, and Merkel has now reigned for 12 years. I think the stability of gover

Electoral Reform committee  In some Länder we have problems, but not in [Inaudible--Editor].

Electoral Reform committee  The legal prescription only says that the procedure has to be democratic.

Electoral Reform committee  The overhang seats are constituency seats, or at least a person, because overhang seats come into being if the party has one more constituency seat than it is entitled to, according to its share of second votes, party votes. So this party gained no list seats, has no list seats,

Electoral Reform committee  The small parties have to reach the five-person threshold. This is very important point because it's connected with the point of strategic voting. I think the most important failure of the first past the post system is that it discriminates between votes depending on the preferen

Electoral Reform committee  Baden-Württemberg is very complicated. The point is that in Baden-Württemberg you have something like an open list because there's only one vote for the constituency seat. For the parties that had not gained constituency seats, the list is constructed in accordance with a percent

Electoral Reform committee  I would add some special experience, which refers to the referendum and the electoral system change that took place in Bremen after a referendum. The other thing that was changed simultaneously was lowering the voting age to 16. This provided a very interesting opportunity. The t

Electoral Reform committee  We have made the calculations, and the seat distribution would have changed from 7, 0,0 seats by party, to 5, 1, 1 seats by party in Newfoundland and Labrador, for example.

Electoral Reform committee  There is a civic movement that wants to hold referenda to change the electoral systems. In effect, they want to make the list candidates more responsive to electoral districts. Typically, the closed list was replaced by an open list. The changes took place in Hamburg and Bremen.

Electoral Reform committee  To put it rather casually, we understand that by strategic voting, a voter will not vote for his favourite party, his highest-preferred party. The motive for strategic voting consists in avoiding a wasted vote. I will concentrate here only on the first votes, because I think this