At first glance, the German electoral system is similar to that of most other western countries, but has its peculiarities. DW explains.
In the general elections, each voter must give two votes: one for a candidate who represents his electoral district and the second for the state list of a party candidates. The system is commonly called “personalized proportional representation”.
Two spaces to mark
The first vote is a direct choice of a candidate and determines about half of the total composition of Bundestag, ensuring that each district is represented.
The second vote determines the strength of the parts in the Bundestag and therefore determines how many candidates in this state list will receive seats.
Since 2025, the number of chairs in Parliament will be limited to 630. A reform of the electoral system was introduced in 2024 and eliminated the provisions that increased the number of legislators with the decrease in the size of the parties. This reform was partially canceled by the Supreme Court of Germany.
The electorate
About 61 million of the 83 million inhabitants of Germany are able to vote, a group that includes German citizens of at least 18 years old.
German citizens who live abroad can also vote by mail as long as they have lived in the country for at least three consecutive months in the last 25 years. The German electoral management office does not prohibit that the embassies or consulates keep the polls, but says that it would entail a “disproportionate quantity of efforts”.
The right to vote can be revoked in the case of individuals who have committed some political crimes, such as the espionage and spread of state secrets, but is maintained for authors such as murder, manslaughter and serious sexual sexual abuse. The same rules apply to the candidates presented by the respective parties.
Just more than half of the electorate is composed of women, almost 40% are 60 years old or more and 14% are under 30 years old.
The participation of the voters tends to be high in Germany. In the last two general elections, this rate was just over 76%.
What is the 5%limit?
According to the German electoral law, the acronyms must obtain a minimum of 5% of the votes directed to the parties (the second vote) to guarantee representation to Bundestag. The device was introduced in 1953 in order to prevent small dissidents, such as those that afflicted the Weimar Republic, enter Parliament and the fragment, making it difficult to form a practicable majority.
However, an exception is granted to the parties that present winning candidates in at least three electoral districts: the conquest of three individual terms suspends the limit of 5% to their respective parts. In 2021, for example, this happened to the left party, which obtained only 4.9% of the second votes, but was allowed to fill 4.9% of the chairs, with 39 representatives, because three of their candidates They won in their electoral districts.
The second exception is for candidates who represent a recognized German minority, such as the Danes in the state of Schleswig-Holstein or Sorbs in Saxony. It takes between 35,000 and 38,000 votes to earn an electoral district, so this is the number of votes that a representative of a minority party needs to get a president at Bundestag. In 2021, Stefan Seidler, the representative of the Danish minority, obtained 55,000 votes, guaranteeing a president in Parliament.
Training of a government and election of a chancellor
If a part gets 50% of the votes, it will actually have representatives to enforce their agenda. But it is unlikely to happen. For this reason, the parts in Germany must often collaborate with one or more parts to form a coalition with enough votes to check Bundestag.
Traditionally, the party candidate who gets the greatest number of votes becomes a chancellor. The party leader who has obtained less coalition votes is often chosen as foreign minister. The chancellor presents his choices for the president, who appoints the members of the government.
Any German citizen who is at least 18 years old can become a chancellor. It is not necessary to have a chair in Bundestag, but must obtain most of the votes of legislators.
The fundamental law – the German Constitution – provides that the first session of the new Bundestag should take place within 30 days of the elections.
The president officially proposes the chancellor candidate, which must therefore obtain the absolute majority of the votes (50% +1). If the candidate fails, Bundestag members can choose another candidate and undergo one vote within 15 days. Once again, an absolute majority will be necessary.
If no candidate gets the absolute majority in the second round of voting, a final vote should be performed immediately. Those who receive the greatest number of votes in this round will be elected by a simple majority.
If the chancellor is elected with an absolute majority, the president should appoint him within seven days. If the elected person obtains only a simple majority in the third round, the president should appoint him within seven days or dissolve the Bundestag, triggering new elections within 60 days.
Counting of an electoral result
According to the law on German electoral revision, all people with voting rights in the country can contest the validity of the elections. After each general election, there are usually hundreds of disputes to the results.
The disputes must be written in the Bundestag electoral revision commission in Berlin within two months after the day of the elections.
The electoral revision committee processes all contributions. A decision is made on every single contestation and every person who has presented appeal receives a response written by Bundestag.
To invalidate the results of an election for Bundestag, a dispute must meet two requirements. Firstly, there must be an electoral error that violates the federal electoral law, the federal electoral code or the Constitution. Secondly, the electoral error shown must have an impact on the distribution of the Bundestag seats.
The Commission needs about a year to process all appeals. Less than 4% of these cases arrived at the Constitutional Court. A German national vote has never been declared not valid.
In normal circumstances, the elections take place again four years later, when everything returns to zero.
(DW)
Source: Terra
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