This question resolves YES if Germany changes its federal election system such that the federal parliament (Bundestag) will have less than 1,000 members regardless of the vote. If this does not happen before the next election, this resolves NO.
This also resolves NO if a reform is implemented but only applies to later elections. It also resolves NO if a new election system is temporarily not applied, for example due to a legal challenge.
Presently the size of the Bundestag can vary due to a system of overhang and leveling seats. The minimum is 598 and it current has 736 members. The governing coalition recently announced a plan to fix the size to exactly 630 members.
1,000
3.00@BrunoParga the first vote’s weren’t as important to start with, but now they lost even more importance. The number of seats for one party in parliament depends on the share of second votes (where you choose a party). The first votes will only decide on the who will be in that group. Before, a candidate win in first votes (in their district) guaranteed them a seat in parliament (half of all seats were reserved for them). However, there were too many districts and one party could win all districts with 30% and have 30% of the second votes, which should only allow them 30% of all seats, but because of the district seats they ought to have half of all seats. This was solved by enlarging the parliament. Now, if there are more district winners than seats for one party, the district winner with the lowest share of the vote will not get in.
@Gideon37 https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/wahlrechtsreform-bundesverfassungsgericht-104.html
The constitutional court accepted the limit.
such that the federal parliament (Bundestag) will have less than 1,000 members
Even in the old system, I think 1,000 members would be really unlikely. I think that would require one party to win something like 200 of the 299 single-member districts and also at least three other parties to get roughly similar shares of second-ballots as that big party.
On the other hand, the meaningful question is probably binary - either it can grow larger than the nominal size, or it cannot.
@kottsiek Also some chance that the legel proceedings prolong the implemantation long enough to only apply to the election after