  In 1998 a long-lost proposal for an election law by Gottlob Frege
(1848--1925) was rediscovered in the Th\"uringer Universit\"ats- und
Landesbibliothek in Jena, Germany. The method that Frege proposed for the
election of representatives of a constituency features a remarkable concern for
the representation of minorities. Its core idea is that votes cast for
unelected candidates are carried over to the next election, while elected
candidates incur a cost of winning. We prove that this sensitivity to past
elections guarantees a proportional representation of political opinions in the
long run. We find that through a slight modification of Frege's original method
even stronger proportionality guarantees can be achieved. This modified version
of Frege's method also provides a novel solution to the apportionment problem,
which is distinct from all of the best-known apportionment methods, while still
possessing noteworthy proportionality properties.
