Equality of Voting Rights in German Federal Election and Constitutional Court

德国联邦议会的选举基本上是按比例代表制进行的，虽然每个选区选出一半的议员。这种组合有时允许几十个所谓的超额授权，即一个政党在一个州选出的候选人多于比例会费。在某些情况下，多余的授权会带来相反的投票效应：更多的选票会使一个政党失去一名代表，反之亦然。2008年，德国宪法法院宣布反投票效应违宪，并要求进行改革。但是新的联邦选举法在2012年再次被认为是违反宪法的，因为它仍然可以产生相反的投票效果。其违宪的主要原因是违反了投票权的平等，即在德国不仅是每个选区的投票权权重的平等，就像在日本所讨论的那样，而且是一次投票对国会组成的影响的平等。

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.