[EM] German parliament votes for military support

[Markus Schulze]

Dear Jobst,

you wrote (16 Nov 2001):
> 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.

I consider the two different majority requirements to be a bug.
Actually, already the constitutional commission in the 1970s
considered them to be a bug. The commission suggested that a
vote of confidence should be passed when "ayes > noes". However,
the parliament ignored the report of the commission.

Markus Schulze