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Comment by hef19898 | Hacker News Reader

hef19898

Just one thing, is the electoral college part of Congress and / or the Senate? If not, the systems are not comparable. And I have the impression that you seriously missunderstood my last paragraph which referred to radical elements thoroughly within their communities. Which, obviously, has nothing to do with constitutional free speech.

In the end, we agree that we don't agree. And for the sake of the discussion it is better than we stop now and don't go towards the 2nd.

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The electoral college (EC) is a state system connected neither to Congress nor the Senate. Rather the EC is apportioned representatives based on the total number of Congressmen and Senators a state has. These representatives are chosen by (and vote at the behest of) the individual states according to how those states choose. All but two states require their EC representatives to vote for the Presidential candidate who won their state vote.

Thanks for the answer. I knew that, and yes the German syatem has a tendency to blur the lines between legslative and executive branches.

My comment was in reply to a comment that equated a parliament electing a chancellor / prime minister with an electoral college. Despite all the downsides of not electing the head of government directly they still are different things.

It's just a unification of some government functions. The functionality is the same.

parliament == electoral_college + congress

Specifically for Germany and the USA:

Bundestag == electoral_college + house_of_representatives

Bundesrat == senate

So you effectively do have a congress and an electoral college. In your system, they are merged and thus have the same members.

There are six typical roles:

1. lower legislative body

2. upper legislative body

3. electoral college

4. supreme court

5. head of state

6. executive

You have the 1==3 and 5==6 mergers. The USA has only the 5==6 merger. The UK has the 1==3 merger and prior to 2009 had the 2==4 merger.

You have to seprete the function frok the body, this is a very relevant separation. e.g. the head of state in Germany has close to zero actual power while France has a very powerfull presidential system. The only thing comming close to electoral college in Germany is electing the Head of State. Both, candidate and electors are caeefully selected by both chambers of parliament. Personnaly I'm not happy with that, parties tend to have way to much power in the German system.

All the Bundesrat has in common with thr Senate is being a second chamber. It is not elected directly as a body. Instead the prime ministers of ech state are making it up. So it is voted for indirectly during state elections. Votes in the Bundesrat are than based population, more or less (if someone knows the details that'll be cool). coalition governments different to the one on the federal level usually abstain (e.g. parties A and B govern federal, C and D being the opposition while parties B and D govern a certain state that state will note vote on certain issues).

In a democracy, these details do actually matter a lot. Otherwise you won't be able to ditinguish democracies on paper from real ones.

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