German Elections

Interesting article in Atlantic about German elections. It describes a very different form of democracy. I think it has great advantages over ours. Germany's system is one form of proportional representation, where the voters vote for the party whose candidates they wish to see in office. It isn't about individual candidates. Parties select their own candidate list. The number of candidates from each party who win office in parliament depends on how many votes each party receives. Those candidates higher on their party's list have a higher probability of gaining office.

I think there are many advantages to the proportional representation system. One advantage is that it almost inevitably creates more than two parties and to form a government requires forming a coalition. To some extent, parties have to make nice with each other.

Here is a link to the article.

There are differences from country to country in the details, but proportional representation systems have much in common. The political dynamics are very different from "first past the post" or "winner take all" systems like ours.