Electoral Reform committee  It essentially comes through the list, but it's not formally enshrined in the legal provisions. The legal provisions provide the opportunity for the political parties to have lists with alternating placement of men and women. Parties have made use of this recently. I would say

Electoral Reform committee  There are two sets of changes. Some are initiated by the Federal Constitutional Court when it examines the electoral law, or in the states by the state constitutional courts. This is then amended promptly, more or less, as demanded by the court. Other changes, which are more of

Electoral Reform committee  No, I think that the German system is consensus-oriented, and in a way you see it in the design of the Bundestag, which is a hemicircle, instead of being two sets of benches that face each other so that you jump each other. To jump each other is very difficult in the German Bunde

Electoral Reform committee  I think in Germany the situation is such that everybody has a constituency representative who is easy to identify, namely the constituency winner, and maybe a second and a third constituency representative, who may be not so easy to identify but is very visible. It's hard not to

Electoral Reform committee  The nomination process is highly structured for the constituency candidates. There are delegate conferences within each party to choose the constituency candidate. There are legal prescriptions that a party must follow in order to set up the list, which is a kind of hierarchical

Electoral Reform committee  That's up to the party. The party can decide on how they do it, but they have to properly document it, and they have to submit these minutes to the electoral authority. There's no legal provision how this decision process must take place within a party.

Electoral Reform committee  It's very simple. It's determined by nature. People live somewhere, and so these members of Parliament also have a place where they live and where they are active. That's most often the place where they are also politically active, in that constituency, which belongs to their res

Electoral Reform committee  In fact, there is this possibility, but that political competition is always going on, and in this case it's going on in the constituency. A couple of years ago, my constituency in Augsburg actually had five representatives in the Bundestag. We had five parties, five caucuses,

Electoral Reform committee  Yes, the tension is felt in Germany, but it's not viewed as something bad or indecent. In fact, it's in the interests of parties to ensure that their leading personnel are seated in Parliament. There's nothing wrong with it, I think, in the public's opinion in Germany.

Electoral Reform committee  It is a matter of choice. Actually, most candidates are constituency candidates and they figure on the list. They have a list position. There are a few exceptions. For example, the president of the Bundestag has no constituency because campaigning in a constituency would be so o

Electoral Reform committee  That's correct. The voting age differs on the state level, on the local level, and on the federal level. On the federal level, it's 18 years, but in Austria it's 16 years. There is a permanent discussion going on about whether we should lower it to 16 years. So far, any attempt

Electoral Reform committee  The two past elections that we looked at did not show any problems like that. Maybe former elections would. The system we propose does not produce overhang seats, but if a party is overly successful with constituency seats, then the seats will be transferred from the competing pa

Electoral Reform committee  In Germany, the political system is certainly part of the subjects which are treated in school, including the elections. Of course, that's only the election for the particular state where the school is located. Also, the federalist election authority produces a lot of material f

Electoral Reform committee  It's generally correct. The results would have been similar—albeit slightly different. We didn't include it in our brief because we didn't want to swamp you with too many prints. Of course, you can do it easily, and we did it. What we presented to you shows the option of includ

Electoral Reform committee  That is correct. That was our proposal. And we called our proposal a “model”, because we just wanted to point out that one needs to make a decision on that question.