[EM] German parliament votes for military support

[Olli Salmi]

At 14:47 +0200 16.11.2001, Jobst Heitzig wrote:
>Consequently, the 666 representatives today had three possibilities to
>vote: a "yes" vote would indicate both approval of the proposal and
>confidence in the administration; a "no" vote would indicate disapproval
>of the proposal and no confidence in this administration; finally,
>abstention.

I find the use of abstention interesting.

There are many kinds of majority:
1) ayes>noes (majority of members present and voting)
2) ayes>noes+abstentions (majority of members present)
3) ayes>noes+abstentions+absences (majority of members)

Here in Finland (and Sweden and the Common Law countries, as far as I know)
abstentions mean "no opinion". They are counted only if you have a voting
machine, like in Parliament and the bigger local councils, and they have no
significance. Number 1) is the only kind of majority we use and we call it
absolute majority.

In Germany abstentions are always counted and recorded in the minutes. A
very common rule is that a motion is not carried if ayes+noes<abstentions.
In this country we don't usually have rules that produce no decision.

In a vote of no confidence or confidence in the Bundestag 3) is used.

In elections (a vote between persons) the possibilities are slightly different:
1) A>B>C... (simple, relative majority, plurality)
2) A>B+C+... (absolute majority, majority)

We normally use 1) if the rules don't require a proportional election or a
run-off. If there's only one candidate, there's no vote and the decision is
unanimous.

In the Soviet Union you could, and in China you probably still can, vote
against a candidate, in the Soviet Union by striking out, in China by
writing a cross against a candidate's name (a circle is a vote for). This
gives at least the following possibilities:

3) A>B+C...  and A>noes (or perhaps A>B>C...  and A>noes)
4) A>B+C..+abstentions+absences and A>noes

4) was used in the elections to the Soviets. At least a 50% turnout was
required. Of course there was no B or C. The elections were often deadlocks
after the fall of the Soviet Union when they were contested, and the
elections seemed to go on for ever.

I used to think allowing a vote against a candidate was just a charade to
make one-party elections look more democratic. I was very surprised to
notice a few weeks ago that in Germany you can vote "ja" or "nein" for a
candidate. Also in New Zealand a ballot can have the option "no confidence"
(Auckland and Otago Students' Associations). In the Cambridge University
Students' Union in the UK there's always a candidate called "re-open
nominations" in a STV election.
Otago:
http://www.ousa.org.nz/issues/20000928_election_results.html
http://www.ousa.org.nz/executive/constitution/elections.html

Apparently the idea is to find a compromise candidate. Or a better one.

The Debian Project has "none of the Above" as an alternative.
http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2001/debian-vote-200103/msg00159.html

Ah, I just found a site of an organization dedicated to spreading this idea
in the US:
http://www.nota.org/
It's claimed to lead into significant increase in democracy. It's even
endorced by Ralph Nader. But I wonder where the good candidates come from
if they weren't standing in the first place.

>Some additional peculiarity: Although it was one vote on both questions
>simultaneously, the decision *rule* was *not* the same for the two parts:
>the factual proposal only needed the simple majority of the votes, that
>is, excluding the abstentions, but the vote of confidence needed at least
>334 votes to pass. Therefore, if some representatives (of the FDP, say)
>had decided to abstain, this could have had the effect that the factual
>porposal would have passed but the vote of confidence not.

This is peculiar indeed. I looked up the Rules of Procedure of the
Bundestag (http://www.bundestag.de/gesetze/go/). The Chancellor can move a
motion of confidence but I couldn't find anything about combining it with
another motion. But I only looked at likely headings.

At 19:57 +0200 16.11.2001, Markus Schulze wrote:
>the german constitution says that only when the parliament
>rejects a vote of confidence the chancellor has the right
>to ask the president to dissolve the parliament. The aim
>of Schroeder's tactics was to provoke such a rejection and
>then to have early elections in February 2002.
>
>To my opinion, the best way to make this kind of tactics
>unattractive is to introduce the Swedish option. The Swedish
>option says that when the parliament is dissolved then the
>new parliament doesn't get a new full term, it gets only the
>rest of the regular term of the old parliament.

Why should it be made unattractive? Of course the Prime Minister has an
edge but new elections are better than a coup d'état [as Markus Schultze
points out in his  posting.] An old edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica
mocked Americans for letting the stars decide the date of the election and
for a long time after I read that it was difficult for me to take fixed
terms seriously.

Regards,
Olli Salmi