Question about German elections
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BRTD
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« on: July 16, 2006, 02:41:39 PM »

OK, since Germany simply let the parties keep any overhang seats they win, what's stopping the CDU and CSU from simply taking advantage of this and just voting CDU throughout the entire country?

If all CSU voters in Bavaria voted CSU for the individual seats, and then voted CDU on the PR, CSU would obviously not make the threshold and would theoreticlaly be awared no seats, but it'd be allowed to keep all the seats it won individually. Meanwhile the CDU's percentage of the vote would be higher, and it would be allowed to gain more seats. The CSU seats would basically be extra. Yet as CSU receives PR votes, the extra seats become basically meaningless.
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Kevinstat
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« Reply #1 on: July 16, 2006, 09:58:30 PM »

Good question.  I do know that the Proportional List part of the election ballot is different in each Land (state) (I read a reference somewhere to a Land list), so the CDU are probably not on the ballot at all in Bavaria.  One would think it wouldn't be that difficult for CSU supporters to get a CDU slate on the ballot, but perhaps there's some provision in German law to prevent that from happening.  Such a provision could seem discriminatory, so perhaps there's just the fact that the SDP and Greens would cry foul if they learned of an effort to have mass voting for different parties in the first and second ballots (although that kind of happened on a smaller scale in the last election with people voting for the FDP so that the CDU could gain more overhang seats while only surrendering PR seats to their likely coalition partner FDP) and the fear that swing voters (between the CDU/CSU/FDP and SDP/Green camps) would react negitively to such a plan (which would be difficult for activists on the right to keep secret since it would require getting a CDU slate on the Bavarian ballot, although you could create another party for CSU voters to vote for on the PR list ballot) and that the resulting loss of some of those voters might be greater than the gain in overhang seats.  Or perhaps there is actually a sense of ethics in German politics that prevent such a scheme being coordinated to the extent necessary to have a major impact on the ballance of the competing coalitions in the lower (main) house of the German parliament.

Although this doesn't prevent what Red discussed from happening, I thought I'd mention that the overhang seats are awarded (or "not taken away," one could say, as those seats were gained by virtue of the party winning the constituency) by Land after each party's "ideal" number of seats (the number of seats each party would have nationally if it didn't gain any overhang seats) are apportioned among the Lander (plural of Land).  That's how parties have overhang seats even though their overall number of seats won is greater than the number of constituencies won.  I used to not know that and wondered how any party that met the 5% or 3-seat threshold that didn't win more than twice as many seats as its share of the PR list vote (actaully its share of that vote that didn't go to parties failing to make the 5% or 3-seat threshold) could gain overhang seats.  Having overhang seats for a party in a Land come at the expense of PR list seats for that party in other Lander up to where the only elected members to the Bundesrag (sp?) for a party were those elected from constituencies would be a good change in my opinion.  There was one constituency where the last election was held late for some reason.  People were speculating that if the CDU did too well on the proportional vote in that constituency that they could lose an overhang seat because it could cause a seat that would be awarded to that party in a Land where they hadn't won any overhang seats to this Land where they weren't going to win any more seats than the constituency seats they had won and likely the constituency seat in that constituency anyway.  They ended up, IIRC, having the best forseen outcome there possible, winning the constituency seat and improving their share of the PR list vote such that they gained another seat while not doing so well that that seat went to that Land and instead went to another Land where the party had not won any overhang seats.  Someone else could verify, clarify or possibly correct what I have just said.

Sincerely,

Kevin Lamoreau
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Middle-aged Europe
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« Reply #2 on: July 17, 2006, 02:35:42 AM »
« Edited: July 17, 2006, 02:40:01 AM by Old Europe »

If all CSU voters in Bavaria voted CSU for the individual seats, and then voted CDU on the PR, CSU would obviously not make the threshold and would theoreticlaly be awared no seats, but it'd be allowed to keep all the seats it won individually.

The CDU does not exist in Bavaria, as the CSU is non-existent in the rest of Germany.

Besides, the rules of procedure of the Bundestag state that a Fraktion (party caucus) is formed by the members of a single political party or the members of multiple parties, provided that those parties are not running against each other in a particular state.
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minionofmidas
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« Reply #3 on: July 17, 2006, 05:38:30 AM »

Yeah, in theory you could pull a stunt where everybody votes CSU (or SPD, or whatever) for the direct seats and CDU (or Greens, or whatever) for the list. Said direct-seats-winning-party would actually have to run a slate of list candidates for it to work. Obviously this would require a grotesque amount of preparation, but yeah it has been proposed by netheads, though certainly not by any serious politicians.
People have not been aware of this way of gaming the system for very long - until 1990 overhang seats came in ones and twos nationally, if at all. The decline in the major parties' vote share, and of course the three-major-parties party system (and lower turnouts) of East Germany have transformed them into a mass occurence.
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freek
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« Reply #4 on: July 17, 2006, 09:14:28 AM »


Besides, the rules of procedure of the Bundestag state that a Fraktion (party caucus) is formed by the members of a single political party or the members of multiple parties, provided that those parties are not running against each other in a particular state.

Would there be a problem when CSU and CDU can't form 1 Fraktion?
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Middle-aged Europe
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« Reply #5 on: July 17, 2006, 09:38:14 AM »


Besides, the rules of procedure of the Bundestag state that a Fraktion (party caucus) is formed by the members of a single political party or the members of multiple parties, provided that those parties are not running against each other in a particular state.

Would there be a problem when CSU and CDU can't form 1 Fraktion?

Well, Gerhard Schröder would still be the Chancellor, because SPD would be the largest party in the Bundestag/Grand coalition. Wink And the presiding officer of the Bundestag would be from the SPD too, instead of someone from the CDU. In fact, counting CDU and CSU separately, the only elections where the SPD would not have been the largest Fraktion in the Bundestag were 1953, 1957 & 1990.

No, it wouldn't work... it would go against the whole identity and self-image of the CDU/CSU. CDU and CSU would officially become two parties competing with each other... and I don't know whether they could fake this for a longer period.
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Angel of Death
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« Reply #6 on: July 21, 2006, 04:28:25 AM »

Wikipedia mentions how such a form of manipulation occurred in an Italian election with the use of decoy lists: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_member_proportional_representation#Decoy_lists
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« Reply #7 on: July 21, 2006, 07:42:02 AM »
« Edited: July 21, 2006, 07:45:35 AM by Old Europe »

Wikipedia mentions how such a form of manipulation occurred in an Italian election with the use of decoy lists: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_member_proportional_representation#Decoy_lists

Comparing Italian politics with politics in Germany, or any other democracy for that matter, is a severe insult. Cheesy
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minionofmidas
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« Reply #8 on: July 21, 2006, 02:51:11 PM »

Wikipedia mentions how such a form of manipulation occurred in an Italian election with the use of decoy lists: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_member_proportional_representation#Decoy_lists

Comparing Italian politics with politics in Germany, or any other democracy for that matter, is a severe insult. Cheesy
... to Italy. Cheesy
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