Happy Voting Day!!!
I just want to wish all the candidates in this election good luck today. My husband and I voted by absentee ballot in late September. We have been following all of the news leading up to the election and will be very interested to see who wins. My oldest son remarked to me that he can’t believe that we will have a new president no matter what after Election Day to take office in January. Our current president came into office before he can remember something like that, and for the first time in his life, he is old enough to understand a little of the process we have in our country to change or maintain our system of democracy. As a mom, that is really a neat thing to watch.
Before I start, I wanted to let you know that this week is fall break for children here in Bavaria. Since the kids are on break, I also am going to take a break and wait till we return from Munich to post any more. At that time, I will have some pictures from both our trip this past weekend to Stuttgart and the upcoming weekend trip to Munich. I hope you have a great week and enjoy the excitement of our government at work.
So my question for the day on Friday was “How does the German government work?” Well it is very complicated, but I will try to give the bare bones of how it works. Germany is also a democracy like the United States, but as a parliamentary government. This means that the parliament decides who the Chancellor is. And there are many additional pieces to how the members of the government get into office so that there is no chance for another Hitler to gain complete control of the government. At a recent supper, we had a very quick crash course in how government is elected in Germany, because the person who is like the governor of Bavaria, called a Minister President, resigned this past Fall, causing special elections for his replacement.
Today, Germany has a Federal President, which is more of a ceremonial position, and a Federal Chancellor, who actually has the power as the head of government. The President is elected by both the parliament and by the state delegates (which are based on popular vote) to serve a 5 year term, and the Chancellor is elected by the parliament to serve a 4 year term. Together, they do the duties that our president does. I can’t find anything to state that there are term limits. In Germany, the President is Horst Köhler, and the Chancellor is Angela Merkel.
Germany also has two legislative branches like we do. The first branch has two chambers, totaling around 598 members combined, but sometimes it is a bit more. One chamber of the parliament is elected by voters. The other chamber has the same number of members, but their members are based on which party the German citizens vote for. So when citizens go to vote, they vote for a specific person as well as a second vote for a specific party. Their term is 4 years. The second branch is made up of delegates, whose numbers are based on population, from each of the 16 regions of Germany. Often the regional delegates are a place where opposition parties can have a say in the federal government. Unlike the US where you mostly only hear about the democratic and republican parties, in Germany there are many parties (although the US does have multiple parties besides Democrat and Republican.),
Finally they have a judicial system as well, but it works as an independent group, unlike our judicial system, and each judicial branch has its own hierarchy. Our judicial system acts as a checks and balances for the other two branches, which in turn act as checks and balances for each of the other branches.
Germany also has a constitution that they follow that was created in 1949 and which, in 1990, was extended to include both West and East Germany as one country.
The states of Germany have much more independence than the US states (and the people here will say they are Bavarian, long before they will say they are German.) They each have their own government, legislature and judicial system and have each passed their own constitutions. The state government can pass laws on everything except defense, foreign affairs and finance.
The question for Monday, November 10th is “What is the Deutches Museum?”
The words for the day today are election - die Wahl (vahl), government - die Regierung (ray geer oong) and vote - die Abstimmung (ahb steem moong).
Auf Wiedersehen,
Frau Spitzer
