German Federal Electoral Law

Abstract

Article 38 (1) of the Basic Law guarantees the fundamental principles of election by providing that “Members of the German Bundestag shall be elected in general, direct, free, equal and secret elections. ” Additionally, the Federal Constitutional Court recognized the “ principles of transparency” as another constitutional principle. Under the German election system or the so-called “personalised proportional system”, each elector has two votes, one for a local candidate, and the other for a political party. The seats are distributed among the parties in proportion to the total number of second votes. However, the system contains elements of first-past-the-post by guaranteeing that every candidate who wins the most first votes in each constituencies automatically gets a seat in parliament.