Equality of Voting Rights in German Federal Election and Constitutional Court

2013 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 23530003
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Fundamental law
• Research Institution: The University of Tokyo
• Principal Investigator: EBIHARA Akio 東京大学, 法学(政治学)研究科(研究院), 教授 (00114405)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): OHNISHI Nami Thea 駒澤大学, 法学部, 講師 (70451763)
• Project Period (FY): 2011 – 2013
• Keywords: 基礎法学 / 選挙権の平等 / ドイツ連邦議会 / 選挙法改正 / 違憲判決

Research Abstract

German federal congressional election is basically a proportional representation, although the half of the congressmen are chosen in each district. This combination allows sometimes dozens of so-called overhang-mandates, i. e. more candidates of a party are chosen in a state than the proportional dues. The overhang-mandates brings under certain conditions the inverse voting effect: more votes make a party lose one representative and vice versa. German Constitutional Court daclared the inverse voting effect as unconstitutional and required a reform in 2008. But the new federal election law was again held to be against the Constitution in 2012, because it still can have the inverse voting effect. The main reason of the unconstitutionality is the viloation of equality of voting rights, which means in Germany not only the equality of the weight of a vote in each district, as is disscussed in Japan, but also the equality of the effect of a given vote to the formation of the congress.