Fabian Michl examines the history and present of German electoral law from a new perspective. Instead of the traditional distinction between majority and proportional representation, he introduces the paradigmatic contrast between personal and party-based elections. He demonstrates how the design of electoral law by parliaments, political parties, governments, and courts is shaped by these competing paradigms and shows that the design of electoral systems is more than a mere question of power. Using a phase model, he traces the shifts between paradigms in German electoral law from the first modern elections to the most recent reforms of the federal electoral system, thereby laying the foundation for a historically and theoretically informed discourse on electoral law beyond day-to-day political debates.