- “General” – means that every German citizen over the age of 18 has the right to vote and to be elected.<\/li>
- “Direct” – means that citizens vote directly for their MPs, without the mediation of representatives who make up a college of electors. This is the main difference with the US electoral system.<\/li>
- “Free” – means that no pressure or blackmail on voters can be exercised by both domestic and foreign factors.<\/li>
- “Equal” – means that each vote has the same specific weight and value as for the composition of the Parliament. This term indicates that the German electoral system is characterized as a simple proportional.<\/li>
- “Secret” – means that every German citizen has the right to cast their ballot without anyone else having the right to know their choice, a procedure which is also ensured in the case of letter of vote.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/image-103.png\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nWhy the number of members of the Bundestag is not fixed but varies<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although the statutes of the Bundestag state a minimum number of 598 deputies but this number is always higher. This is due to the peculiarity of the electoral system. Typically, the minimum number of members of the Bundestag 598 is divided into two (299 plus 299), which is the number of votes for each citizen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In essence, the electoral system determines a double voting process, one for a specific candidate and one for a party. One part in the 299 deputies is elected by direct and personal vote held in the 299 regions where each region corresponds to about 250 thousand population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Voters vote for whomever they want among the existing candidates who can also be independent, and participate in the elections once they have collected the first 200 signatures of their supporters. The candidate who receives the most votes is automatically a member of the Bundestag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The other 299 deputies come from the party lists in each state and the distribution is proportional based on the percentage ensured by each party. The only condition is that the party has exceeded the 5% threshold at National level who has managed to elect at least three of his candidates in the direct personal voting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/image-104.png\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nThe electoral tactics of the voters<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Voters have the right to vote for two different parties by applying a specific electoral tactic:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- They can vote for example the Social Democrats in the direct vote and the Greens in the party vote, with aim to help the traditional SPD candidate enter Parliament or be strengthened.<\/li>
- While voting increases the number of MPs. In the 2013 elections 630 MPs, in the 2017 elections 709 MPs.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
The German Constitution stipulates that whichever candidate prevails in each constituency rightfully acquires the status of Member of Parliament. This rule increases the total number of seats in any state by creating so-called “surplus seats”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For this reason the electoral legislator has provided for the existence of additional seats called “balancing seats” and distributed proportionally to the elected parties. The number of these seats is directly related to the number of “surplus seats” that have arisen in the 16 states.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Under the German Constitution and as also mentioned on the website of the German Federal Parliament known as the Bundestag the members of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[818,390],"tags":[779,2936,489],"class_list":["post-6123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-politics","tag-elections","tag-electoral-system","tag-germany"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6123"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6127,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6123\/revisions\/6127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}