
Why the German elections matter to the rest of the world - Tomte
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/31/europe/german-election-guide-trnd/index.html
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doener
"Who he is: Schulz, 61, is a former president of the European Union"

No, he is the former president of the European Parliament. Also the German
system is very different from the US and the chancellor is the most powerful
political position in Germany, but not the equivalent to the US president.

~~~
lispm
Some of the important differences: the German chancellor gets elected by the
parliament, based on a proposal by the German President. With a majority in
the parliament he/she can also be removed from office (happened to chancellor
Helmut Schmidt). The German chancellor has no term limit.

~~~
Maultasche
You could think of the chancellor of Germany as the equivalent to the Prime
Minister of the UK: elected by parliament and holds the real power in the
country.

The president of Germany would be more like the Queen in the UK: head of state
with mainly ceremonial powers, but doesn't take much of a roll in actually
running the country.

The chancellor was originally a subordinate position to the King of Prussia
and later the German Kaiser. After 1918, the Kaiser was replaced by the
president, who had a much more diminished role than the Kaiser did, and the
chancellor undisputedly became the most powerful position.

In the US, the president is both of those positions rolled into one, with the
exception of being elected by the states rather than by Congress.

~~~
lispm
> The president of Germany would be more like the Queen in the UK

Fortunately the German president makes his own speeches.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_from_the_throne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_from_the_throne)

Luckily Germany is no longer a monarchy, since 1918.

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eclipsetheworld
>What's the point of this convoluted system? It allows voters to split their
vote between parties. They can vote for a local candidate from one party and
cast their second vote for a different party.

That's not really the point of the second vote. If we would only have the
first vote we might have 599 representatives that only were able to get 20% of
the votes in their district (the remaining 80% being spread across other
candidates with a vote share of <20%). With the second vote we ensure that at
least half of the seats are distributed proportionally across the parties and
smaller parties have a chance to get into the Bundestag.

~~~
CrystalGamma
I don't know why you say 'at least half', but the parties that got less than
proportional number of seats (usually everyone except the CDU and sometimes
SPD) gets Ausgleichsmandate ([leveling
seats]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leveling_seat)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leveling_seat\)))
so that the parliament as a whole is representative proportionately to the
second vote (excluding parties with less than 5% of votes).

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virtuexru
> If the 62-year-old Merkel wins, it'll be her fourth term in the post. And if
> she were to serve a full term, she would tie with Helmut Kohl as Germany's
> longest serving post-war chancellor (16 years).

Very interesting; is there no limit to consecutive terms in the German
government? Wonder what the pros and cons are to this approach (I'm posting
from the US where the limit is two consecutive terms).

~~~
good_gnu
Generally, the rationale of term limits seems to be to prevent a dictatorial
or monarchistic system from emerging.

However, consider the rise of the National Socialists in Germany: In 1930,
they first got a result > 3% in a federal election. By the end of 1933 all
other political parties were banned. No practical term limit could have
prevented this dictatorship, even though they never got more than 44% of the
vote in a federal election, i.e. never enough to really change the
constitution by democratic means. So we definitely know that term limits are
not a completely reliable measure.

~~~
neves
> Generally, the rationale of term limits seems to be to prevent a dictatorial
> or monarchistic system from emerging.

In Brazil, we didn't had reelections in the executive branch. 20 years ago the
president bribed the Congress to change the Constitution so he could be
reelected.

It has been a disaster!

The person in power would use all the government machine for his/her
reelection. The election of a second term becomes almost a plebiscite of
yes/no if the person must continue.

The renovation of the elected politicians has come almost to a halt. The
emergence of new politicians were stifled. A real mess.

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i_don_t_know
"For their second vote, they choose from a list of the political parties. The
remaining 299 seats are then distributed among the parties based on the
percentage of votes received nationwide. Only parties that get more than 5% of
the vote nationally can send representatives to the parliament."

No. The second vote determines the overall number of seats in parliament that
a party receives. Some of these seats are assigned directly based on the first
vote. The remaining seats are filled in from lists of candidates that each
party selects before the election.

If a party wins more seats through the first vote than it should really have
based on the second vote, then that distorts the results of the second vote.
Additional seats are created and assigned to the other parties in parliament
to restore the proportionality of the seats based on the second vote (or at
least reduce the distortion).

Things are a bit more complicated because each party selects a separate list
of "fill-in" candidates for each state in which the party runs for parliament.
So the national results of the second vote are broken down to the state level,
compared to the first vote results of that state, and then "fill-in"
candidates are picked for that state. A similar procedure is used for picking
candidates for the additional seats that restore the proportionality of the
second vote.

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valueprop
Why do we still need "seats", instead of having online voting for everybody on
every proposed law? Because a small group wants the power.

~~~
_glass
No, because those direct voting means that all people can make an educated
decision on a topic. But a politicians job is exactly to free us from this
work. Nobody wants to constantly mingle with politics when they can rather
watch a movie or read a book.

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usr1106
The 42 parties mentioned in the article are just a curiosity. Because ballot
sheets are issued on state level to use US terminology (Länder in German) no
voter has the choice between all of them. More importantly more than 30
parties have not the slightest chance to win a single seat.

