[EM] Direct Link Between Voters and MPs

[Markus Schulze]

Dear Donald,

you wrote (8 Oct 1999):
>    Does anyone know if the German ballot has the party label along side
> each candidate??
>    I ask because if the party label is along side each candidate, that
> would explain how this could happen. The voters were merely picking
> unknown candidates by party label.
>    If so, this says little for the claim by some that people wish to
> vote for candidates and less for party.
>
> > In the last elections (27 Sep 1998) to the German Bundestag,
> > something happened that demonstrated the direct link between
> > the voters and their MPs: One poll station accidently used
> > ballots that had been printed for a different constituency
> > so that wrong candidates were listed on these ballots.
> > The poll station opened at 8.00 a.m. and this accident
> > was discovered by a voter at 1.15 p.m.. Until then already
> > 277 voters had voted without even noticing that wrong
> > ballots were used.

Yes, there is the party label along side each candidate.

I want to add that these two constituencies were not even
neighbouring and that the poll station with the wrong ballots
was not even near the border of its constituency.

Source: Page 127-128 of the Report of the Electoral Commission of
the German Bundestag (Deutscher Bundestag, "Beschlussempfehlung
des Wahlpruefungsausschusses," Drucksache 14/1560, 9 Sep 1999,
http://dip.bundestag.de/btd/14/015/1401560.pdf).

Markus Schulze