Germany’s Federal Assembly has reelected the country’s mostly ceremonial president, Horst Köhler, a conservative ally of prime minister (Chancellor) Angela Merkel, to a second 5-year term.
We can call him Landslide Horst, for he won 613 votes in the 1,224-member Assembly. Gesine Schwan, a political science professor endorsed by the Social Democratic and Green parties, came in second with 503 votes. (Financial Times.)
The Federal Assembly includes all 612 members of the first chamber of the national parliament, the Bundestag, and 612 delegates chosen specifically for this purpose by the state legislatures. The Federal Assembly meets only for the purpose of electing the president, which it may take up to three ballots to do. The first two ballots require an absolute majority of all members, whereas the third ballot requires only a majority of votes cast for the previous top two candidates. Several past election have required a third ballot.
The voting procedure is unusual. We might call it “roll-call secret ballot.” Each of the 1,224 member’s names is called, and the member then places a ballot, inside a sealed envelope, into a clear ballot box at the Assembly’s dais.
The campaign is also interesting. DW-TV reported as the vote was taking place that the candidates had “stumped” all around the country and that the outcome would be taken as an indication of the main parties’ strengths heading into the general parliamentary election due in September. This despite the fact that, obviously, this is an elite-driven electoral process with no popular votes, and all the members are chosen by Germany’s normally quite unified parties. It was known that Assembly members chosen by conservative parties controlled 614 seats, but because that would be only one vote more than a majority, and because that majority includes members of a center-right protest party that had held the Christian Social Union to a rare sub-majority share in the latest Bavarian election, and finally due to the secret vote, the outcome was not a sure thing. Or at least a first-round majority was by no means assured.
Also interesting is that the two main parties–the Christian Democrats (including the Bavarian Christian Social Union) and the Social Democrats–had separate presidential candidates despite sharing power in the federal “grand coalition” cabinet. Kohler’s re-election was endorsed by the Free Democratic Party, currently an opposition party, but the preferred coalition partner of the Christian Democrats, if the next election makes it possible again.
How do the Landtage choose their Electors? I must have read several dozen descriptions but they all (including the German Const/ Basic Law itself) stop at a level of generality around “an equal number chosen by proportional representation by the State Legislatures”. I take it this means, eg, if Suddischerheinwestfalenbayernsaarland has 10% of Germany’s population, it gets 61 Presidential Electors, and if the Democratic Social Union holds 34% of the seats in the Landtag there, its Fraktion or parliamentary caucus gets to appoint 21 of its members as Electors? IOW, something like the (1994) South African Senate?
Seed planted by Tom Round — 24 May 2009 @ 18:25
I’m not sure if there is an English description of this somewhere, but according to the German wikipedia and Wahlrecht.de the BV is made up of 50% members of the Bundestag and 50% members chosen by the Landtage.
You then have a distribution between the Länder and then within the Länder where the Landtage choose their representatives.
Two notes: The candidate for Die Linke received two more votes than he should have and there was a ceremonial faux pas between the first vote and the announcement of the result – the musicians and the flowers arrived too early!
(The wikipedia link doesn’t quite work due to the parenthesis but I hope you can get to the page anyway)
Seed planted by Jacob Christensen — 24 May 2009 @ 21:06
You’re basically right, Tom, see http://www.wahlrecht.de (in German)
Seed planted by Bancki — 25 May 2009 @ 04:08
Danke, Bancki… I foresee a book title: “German Politics: Kohl to Kohler”.
No, no, wait… Even better:
1st Bundestag Deputy: “Are you voting for Kohler?”
2nd Bundestag Deputy: “If I were entitled to cast two or more votes, the Basic Law would have said so explicitly.”
Seed planted by Tom Round — 25 May 2009 @ 07:40
Here’s the money shot (of the grid).
I’m impressed by the translation job BabelFish accomplishes (especially given German word-order), but its rendition of the names of some of the Presidential Electors is unintentially hilarious in its literalness:
Thomas cash-eat, Baden-Wuerttemberg, MdB
Seriousness Reinhard Beck, Baden-Wuerttemberg, MdB
Andreas’s young, Baden-Wuerttemberg, MdB
Karl George waving man, Berlin, MdB
Yoke Konrad pious one, Lower Saxony, MdB
Sounds almost African…
Seed planted by Tom Round — 25 May 2009 @ 07:57
Tom, thanks for that. The grid is very informative. But, like you, I can’t help but be amused at the translation. I like that there is a party known as the LEFT ONE and another one called the party ALLIANCE 90/DIE the GREEN, and a state called Saxonia.
But one of my favorites is this:
Gearbox WV? Is this an electoral formula I have not yet learned of?
And this is particularly straightforward:
This, too, is good:
Seed planted by MSS — 25 May 2009 @ 14:15
Another page on that site refers to a party winning a “Swan majority” in a “national” (State, I think) election in one Land with only 47% of votes.
Reminds me of the apocryphal story of Margaret Thatcher visiting Japan and being introduced as leader of Britain’s “Preservative Party”.
Seed planted by Tom Round — 25 May 2009 @ 18:43
> “BV is made up of 50% members of the Bundestag and 50% members chosen by the Landtage.”
I had always somewhat lazily assumed that a Land’s number of Electors was equal to its number of Bundestag seats (districts + list seats assigned to lists from that Land) – analogous to US Electors (minus the Senators) – but it looks instead as if the 614 are reapportioned among the Laender before each Presidential election, based on population statistics.
Speaking of Senators, I distinctly recall having read in three or four texts – not just encyclopaedias, but even political science books – that the Bundesrat delegates also take part in Presidential elections, which is patently untrue.
Seed planted by Tom Round — 25 May 2009 @ 23:26
When parties submit different lists of candidates for the Bundesvesammlung (getrennte Wahlvorschläge), the Landtag votes; seats are distributed by D’Hondt. (§ 4 (3) Bundespräsidentenwahlgesetz).
In some Länder the parties reduce the ‘indirect election’ to a formality by making a common list of candidates (gemeinsamen Wahlvorschlag).
Seed planted by Bancki — 26 May 2009 @ 06:17
Isn’t that how legislators in Anglo-American legislatures choose committee members?
In Australian parliaments, the floor leaders usually work out the number of slots per party and each puts up its only allotted number of candidates, who get in unopposed.
The Clerk of one Parliament told me that, if the deal ever broke down and there were more candidates than Committee positions, there was provision for a ballot… which would be block vote.
Which raises an interesting Pol Sci question. One can readily understand why, in a European parliament where a contested election would be by proportional representation, all parties would agree in advance to a quick and easy bargain that models what they would each get anyway.
However, in an Anglo legislature, there is no immediate incentive for the majority to agree to a “unity ticket” with the opposition. It could, if it wanted, grab all slots for itself. The reason it doesn’t is long-term political self-interest; it would look bad in the media (and is the sort of issue voters can quickly grasp as a “power grab”), and would incite reprisals by their opponents after the next election.
(Swiss Cabinet posts are a special case. Each is selected by majority runoff, but all major parties agree that the Cabinet needs to include all major parties as well as Cantons, religions and languages).
On the other hand, I suspect that without a Constitutional requirement of proportional representation within Laender as well as across them, there would be an incentive for German parties to do what American parties have, and opt for a winner-take-allocation of presidential electors within each State.
I have occasionally toyed with the idea of an Australian president being chosen by an electoral college of, say, 695 electors – 75 appointed by the federal government, 50 by each State govt, 10 by each self-governing Territory govt. Appointments would last, say, 10 years (no re-appointment allowed) and would hopefully becoming a sort of republican honour equivalent to a knighthood. Current or recently retired MPs would be barried. Then I found out some Canadians had suggested the same thing from the opposite direction – that a Canadian president should be elected by holders of the Order of Canada.
Seed planted by Tom Round — 26 May 2009 @ 18:49
> “We can call him Landslide Horst…”
Or “Diet Kohler”…
Was this a one-Horst race?
Alan – stop me before I throw in a Caligula joke here.
Seed planted by Tom Round — 21 June 2009 @ 21:12
I will disregard your incitation about Incitatus.
Seed planted by Alan — 22 June 2009 @ 00:01
Horst Köhler resigns because of remarks in an interview flying back from Afghanistan.
In parliamentary monarchies, every statement of the monarch must be countersigned by a minister and in case of controversy, the minister resigns and the monarch stays, but in parliamentary republics…?
Seed planted by Bancki — 31 May 2010 @ 13:13