Germany's Eccentric Electoral Rules

I came across an interesting article on Germany’s upcoming election in the Economist yesterday. It appears that state election in Germany is divided into 2 stages: the first one is to elect individual representatives while the second one is to elect parties to represent the state. The interesting part is that if a candidate loses in the first stage, he/she may still be able to enter Bundestag (Germany’s Parliament) if 1) his/her party win the second stage and 2) he/she is high enough in the party hierarchy at the state level.

With such kind of electoral rules, I am worried that candidates affliated to popular parties will not do their best to connect with voters in the first stage because in any case, they will still be elected in the second stage due to their party affliations. Consequently, this will result in representatives that do not really represent their constituents in the Bundestag because they are elected by virtue of their party affliations, but not by how well they can identify with the constituents’ issues.

Clearly, something must be done about these electoral rules. As a start, perhaps the relevant authorities can prevent the same candidate from taking part in both stages so as to remove the possibility of a first-stage loser from being elected in the second stage.