Kieran Williams

Abstract

In February 2021, the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic struck down key elements of the electoral system that had been in place for almost twenty years. Departing from the deferential tendency of most of its election case law, the Court ruled that the use of the D’Hondt highest average method and a scaled threshold for electoral alliances violated con- stitutional principles of proportionality and equality. This article offers a critical reading of the Court’s reasoning, which did little to explain the departure from the line taken in earlier challenges to the electoral system but also refused to rethink the longstanding acceptance of the five-percent threshold as a constitutionally acceptable infringement of equality. This article also shows that the legislature chose a replacement for D’Hondt that would not be expected to result in a more proportional outcome, as was confirmed by the results of the October 2021 elections for the Chamber of Deputies. The article concludes that the deci- sions of the Court and the legislature leave the new electoral system open to future legal challenges.

Keywords

• czech republic
• electoral systems
• election law
• constitutional courts
• judicial review
• bad faith
• proportional representation
• d’hondt
• imperiali