[EM] RE: BC & PR

[Olli Salmi]

I misunderstood parts of the Weimar Republic Elections Act.

At 20:22 +0300 15.4.2002, Olli Salmi wrote:
>Elections Act 24/7/1920 in German:
>http://www.reichspresseamt.de/Rechtsfundstellen/reichswahlgesetz.html
>Elections were regulated by the Elections Act. Men and women from the age
>of 20 could vote, men and women from 25 had the right to be elected. The
>election system was a closed list PR. The number of MPs was not fixed;
>there was a seat for every 60000 voters and a further seat for every 30000.
>This is equivalent to Sainte-Laguë and you cannot get more proportional.
>
>The elections were conducted in districts but the parties also had country
>lists. The votes for a district list in excess of multiples of 60000 were
>allotted to the country list that they had declared they'd support. This is
>a system of additional members to make the result even more proportional.
>
>The candidates were elected in the order that they stood on the list of
>candidates. A district candidate list needed 50 signatories, a country list
>20 signatories. Apparentements were possible between district lists which
>supported the same country list. The same person could stand on a district
>list and a country list, if the district list supported the country list.
>It seems that there were no formal parties.

Two or three districts were combined into regions (Wahlkreisverbände).
Apparentements were possible between lists in the same region. The
remainders of the lists in the apparentement were added up and the lists
were allotted one extra seat for every 60000 votes. These seats were
allocated to the lists in the order of the sizes of the remainder, but only
if one of the lists had got at least 30000 votes. This excluded very small
parties.

The seats allocated to a country list ("national list" might be better
English) could not exceed the number of the seats allocated to the district
lists of the same party, so if a party got no seats locally, it got no
seats at all. This also excluded smaller parties and the actual threshold
could be bigger than the 5% that it is now. On the other hand, parties with
regional support were favoured.

So there were three rounds of allocation, first to the district lists, then
the remainders to the lists in the regional appartements, and finally the
remainders in the whole country to the national lists. At the final round a
remainder of 30000 was worth a seat.

There were 35 districts and 16 regions. The number of MPs varied between
423 and 647.

Olli Salmi


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