Just imagine being a artist, doing furry because you love it or maybe just because it pays your bills. And then someone from HBO contacts you about commissioning a picture of John Oliver as a horny otter in skintight jorts.

This sort of ranked choice voting would be a pretty good solution to the issues with the 5% barrier.

It would also empower small parties like Volt or ÖDP, especially in terms of party funding (which is tied to election results).

Although tbh, BSW (which are openly pro Russia, so their ranked choice might have been AfD) and FDP (whose understanding of their oft-touted economy is on the level of a second semester econ major with a trustfund) not making it into Parliament this time is the best thing about these otherwise pretty terrible eleven results.

The system is pretty neat, but it does come with some issues. See all those dark blue districts in Bavaria? That’s way more seats for the CSU than they would be entitled to by the proportional representation.

Previously, these “overhanging mandates” were handled by simply increasing the size is Parliament until proportionality is met (“compensate mandates”). This was fine for decades, where there were always only a couple of those. But as CSU votership dropped (among other things), we were looking at more than 200 additional MEPs (in a parliament of officially 598 seats).

So it got reformed. Parliament now has a fixed 630 seats. The “overhanging mandates” get dropped based on the margin by which they won their electoral district (with some sorting by state mixed in). Most of those districts still got their representative via the party lists, but there actually are 4 districts that are unrepresented now. So it’s not a perfect system either.