
German elections don't make sense - mxfh
http://pudo.org/blog/2013/09/13/btw13.html
======
afterburner
Is this guy an anti-proportional representation activist? Because his post
sure reads like it. The goal of the system is to have the proportions in the
Bundestag match the proportion of the vote. There may be some math involved in
getting the right mix from the right areas, but the goal is quite simple and
easy to understand, as is the result.

I think proportional representation would improve many of the democratic
systems in the Western world.

~~~
kps
PR gives disproportionate influence to fringe parties. Some people like this
(especially when it's currently _their_ fringe that is kingmaker) and some
don't.

People discussing election systems need to understand Arrow's theorem and then
understand what they're trading off with particular systems.

~~~
jvm
The German system requires a 5% threshold to be seated; IMO that represents a
sizeable chunk of people's viewpoints. And either way, the winning coalition
must represent a majority of Germans. That promotes centrism not extremism.

~~~
mjn
It sometimes does promote centrism, for example when the right and left
parties each need to compete for the support of a centrist party to form a
majority coalition. But that isn't an inherent feature of the system, and the
opposite can also happen. Coalition politics can pull the government towards a
fringe when they rely on a fringe party to reach a majority.

This can happen, for example, when the two main blocs (center-right / center-
left) each get around 40%, and then the far-left and far-right each get ~10%.
One solution in that case is a left-right unity government with 80%. But
another one is a left or a right government with barely over 50%, in which the
extreme party holds the balance of power. Since the government depends on the
extreme party to stay in power, that party is able to extract some concessions
that are not desired by the centrist part of the electorate, and which they
would not likely have been able to get outside of the coalition horse-trading
process.

An example of this happening was the 2001-2011 right-wing government in
Denmark. The coalition was made up of the traditional center-right parties,
together with the anti-immigrant populist movement, Dansk Folkeparti. Since
the coalition could not afford to lose DF's ~12% vote, they ended up
reluctantly agreeing to a number of anti-immigrant policies that would not
otherwise have been passed.

------
adsche
Click on the screenshot to see it in action. ( _That_ doesn't make sense, if
you ask me ;) )

~~~
pudo
True. Added a link :)

------
protomyth
As an outsider, is there much difference in people from around the country
culture-wise? Or, I guess phrasing it a little better, is there "Germany" or
do some regions define identity?

~~~
rmk2
Politically speaking, certain areas traditionally vote for certain political
parties or sides.

Traditionally, the Northeast and Northwest tend to vote further left (SPD, Die
Linke), while the Southwest and Southeast are more likely to vote further
right (CDU/CSU), with the Liberal (FDP) and Green (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen)
parties generally stronger in the former West-Germany, and here specifically
in and around the big(ger) cities.

 _Die Süddeutsche_ has a neat little atlas that shows how close a given region
has voted to the average, and how each individual party fared last time[1].

The general divide in Germany is that of North/South, where the South has
traditionally been the powerhouse of the German economy, especially ever since
steel and coal became less important. Except for VW, which are decidedly
Northern, most other big German car manufacturers have their headquarters in
the South, particularly in Baden-Württemberg or Bayern (Audi, BMW, Mercedes,
and Porsche), with Opel sitting in Hessen. The north has traditionally been
more agricultural, the West has been the traditional place of steel and coal
(Ruhrgebiet), with particular cities or areas being particularly classicly
left-wing oriented because of a high number of working class people.

[1]: [http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/wahlkreis-atlas-dem-
durch...](http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/wahlkreis-atlas-dem-durchschnitt-
auf-der-spur-1.1740655)

------
gametheoretic
Boom, what a closer.

Deutscher, eine Frage - warum haben die Piraten so wenig Erfolg? Im Gefolge
von NSA, usw., meine ich.

~~~
seclorum
What I know of the Pirate Party is that they are suffering for their own
collective weakness and inability to organize.

It is a fallacy that 'safety in (representative) numbers' is a way to organize
a movement; big social movements _need_ leaders who are able to demonstrate
the cause, and Liquid Democracy dilutes this fact as much as it can - not
because its proponents want to be successful, but because the idea of a benign
leadership is abhorrent to those who want 'no leaders'.

Like it or not, we live in a world where _nothing_ gets done if it depends on
a committee to do it. This is a very difficult thing for the Pirate Party to
deal with; since almost everything the Party tries to do must conform to the
rules of consensus implied by the Liquid Democracy policies.

The Pirate Party's leadership is hamstrung by the requirement to get approval
for everything, from their masses. _Everything_.

Eventually, the same thing will happen to the Pirate Party that happened to
Socialism: its proponents will learn that capitalisation is _very_ important
to getting new ideas propagated among the masses. So far, the PP does not
represent much of great value to the individual, and it has a very difficult
time even agreeing, internally, on how to create any such value to sell to the
people..

~~~
M2Ys4U
>almost everything the Party tries to do must conform to the rules of
consensus implied by the Liquid Democracy policies.

Ever now and then somebody will pop up in the Pirate Party UK and suggest that
we adopt Liquid Feedback like the German party does, and this is one of the
most important reasons why we don't.

The UK party has a much more centralised leadership, while still facilitating
membership decision-making over policy.

------
eamsen
I used to believe in a perfect voting system. But then I took an Arrow in the
knee.

~~~
daniel-cussen
And another and another, all of them grey.

~~~
eamsen
Sorry about that, but the Hacker News 2 app for Android doesn't have any
feedback for whether your comment has been posted or not. Must have been late,
I'm not sure why I was so insisting on getting that one out...

