Overview
- Mehr Demokratie has called on all East German states to lower the parliamentary entry threshold from five to three percent in order to improve voter representation.
- The group has proposed a “replacement vote” that allows electors to allocate a secondary preference if their first-choice party fails to meet the threshold.
- Activists highlight that 14.3 percent of ballots in Brandenburg and significant shares in Saxony and Thuringia were effectively wasted, complicating coalition formation.
- Campaigners note that the five percent barrier was adopted after the Weimar Republic to curb excessive party fragmentation but now argue it undermines representative democracy.
- Upcoming elections in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern are poised to bring the threshold debate onto campaign agendas.