Electoral systems, seen as the most specific manipulative instrument of politics, thus come to the forefront of politicians’ interests. Recently, the Parliamentary Electoral Act in Czechia was amended. The case study focuses on a brief reflection on this electoral system change enforced by Constitutional Court judgment. The shortcomings of the 2002 electoral system have been identified; discussed are changes in electoral legislation and the political consequences thereof, including by simulating electoral results since 2002 under the new electoral system and comparing them with those under the previous Parliamentary Electoral Act, e.g. by analysing the overall seats–votes proportionality, parliamentary parties’ over-/ underrepresentation or malapportionment, and confronting the political consequences of the new Parliamentary Electoral Act with the 2021 Constitutional Court judgment. Despite the many flaws in the Court’s reasoning and the inconvenient timing, there was some space for the political elites to remedy the deficiencies of the 2002 electoral system. The case study concludes that the political representation did not take advantage of but rather missed the opportunity to remedy the Czech electoral legislation.

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 constitutional 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 decisions of the Court and the legislature leave the new electoral system open to future legal challenges.

In response to a limited discussion on proportionality of the Czech electoral reform from early 2021, this article focuses on the proportionality of alternatives proposed through the lens of its various conceptions and levels of measurement. We model electoral results based on five official electoral bills. A mixture of various perspectives of proportionality demonstrated on electoral results since 2002 offers a complex picture of different interpretations of proportionality of analysed electoral systems. Overall proportionality of these electoral systems is high, although not necessarily through the perspective of each individual party in scrutiny. The proportionality of representation within individual electoral districts depends on the definition of proportionality. Finally, analysed electoral rules differ in their ability to achieve representation of electoral districts compared to their utility in achieving partisan proportionality. The level of partisan proportionality of the new electoral law is similar to the previous rules but it sidelines proportionality of representation of electoral districts.