During the
2014 and
2019 Budapest Assembly elections, voters elected the Mayor of Budapest, and the mayors of the
23 districts directly, while 9 seats in the assembly were distributed proportionally, taking into account votes cast for losing district mayoral candidates. In October 2023, former liberal
MP Gábor Fodor, who by then had become a vocal supporter of the ruling party
Fidesz, proposed the restoration of the party-list proportional rules in the Budapest Assembly elections, which was applied between 1994 and 2010. According to Fodor, the dominance of the district mayors in the General Assembly of Budapest results in "the capital's aspects appearing less in the decisions". According to the opposition politicians, Fidesz prepared the amendment of the electoral law with this opinion article months before the election, in the same way as in 2014, along the lines of current political interests. Incumbent mayor
Gergely Karácsony argued "It is not realistic that a minion of
Viktor Orbán's regime would have come up with this proposal from his own wellhead". Fodor's idea was widely embraced by the pro-government media in the following weeks. Independent media
Telex.hu analyzed that the amendment complicates the situation of the opposition parties, who are forced to cooperate while running separately in the simultaneously held
European Parliament election. The opposition
Our Homeland Movement submitted the amendment proposal to the parliament in November 2023. According to them, "the current system favors the two largest political poles (Fidesz and the left-wing opposition), which does not correspond to democratic diversity". The parliament, with the government alliance
Fidesz–KDNP's two-thirds majority, voted for the amendment to the law in December 2023, restoring the party list system after ten years. ==Election system==