The Venice Commission’s Code of good practice in electoral matters9 recommends that the fundamental elements of electoral law, in particular the electoral system proper, membership of electoral commissions and the drawing of constituency boundaries, should not be open to amendment less than one year before an election, or should be written in the constitution or at a level higher than ordinary law. The Venice Commission has pointed out the risk of manipulating the vote through changes of the electoral law, against which it has insisted on respect for the stability principle. More precisely: “Stability of the law is crucial to credibility of the electoral process, which is itself vital to consolidating democracy… One way of avoiding manipulation is to define in the Constitution or in a text higher in status than ordinary law the elements that are most exposed (the electoral system itself, the membership of electoral commissions, constituencies or rules on drawing constituency boundaries). Another, more flexible, solution would be to stipulate in the Constitution that, if the electoral law is amended, the old system will apply to the next election – at least if it takes place within the coming year – and the new one will take effect after that.”10 The amendments address one of the fundamental elements of electoral law, the electoral system proper and deals with the role of the electoral constituencies. While limited in nature, it is difficult to assess the reach of the changes in the allocation of seats they could bring. At any rate, as the next elections in Germany will take place in 2025 in principle, stability of electoral law is not put into question. There is sufficient time for the political parties and other stakeholders to prepare for elections based on the amended electoral system. Since the level of support for political parties may change over this period, the amendments cannot be considered as aimed at cementing the level of representation of the parties in the present majority coalition or to fight against political pluralism. Moreover, it is commendable that some proposed provisions of the amendments, specifically those determining the order of the State (Land) lists of parties by the number of second votes that each obtained in the last elections (Section 30(3)), do not come into force until 2026, after the next planned Bundestag elections.