Comparing political systems
The elections and the possibility that Gore might not become president although he got 200,000 votes more than Bush made me think about different political systems.
I’m always wondering why so few people vote in the US. It’s supposed to be a free country, where everything is possible, everyone can fulfil their dreams… and people are not interested in who is their president?
In Germany, we last voted for a new chancellor two years ago. No, we don’t elect a chancellor; we vote for a candidate that gets send to the Bundestag, and for a party. The chancellor is then elected by the Bundestag. This is somewhat similar to the US system, but I don’t think it’s possible that the candidate of a certain party can be elected for chancellor when the party (or coalition) does not have the overall majority.
But things in Germany are a little more complicated than in the US. We have six different parties in the Bundestag, so coalitions are necessary.
And we had a voter participation of 82.2 percent! (In 1994, it was only 79%.)
Here’s the official provisional result of the election to the 14th German Bundestag held on 27Â September 1998. (In case you are wondering, “overhang mandates”, or Überhangmandate are additional seats a party get if more of their candidates are directly elected into the Bundestag than the number of seats they get because of the percentage of votes for the party.)
Lego!
Zannah had another cool lego link: The Star Wars Trilogy – all made from Lego! (The only strange thing about it is that I see ?@?@?@ here and there. Although the site is in English.)
Space Cowboys
Gabi und Jörg haben gestern im Kino Space Cowboys gesehen und geben ihm zwei Clowns. Dann können André und ich ihn ja beruhigt ansehen gehen. Und zwar in der Originalfassung! 
When I grow up, I wanna be an astronaut!
More voting
I voted 2000 – { fray }:
“The following pages hold 14 different voices telling 14 different stories about politics, elections, and America. […] But you won’t find any political diatribes or partisan rants here. These are stories about the thing that connects us to the talking heads on television, the thing that makes it all work, the thing that keeps us coming back to the polls year after year. – The thing otherwise known as hope.”
US Elections – Update:
So maybe Bush has not won after all? I just came back from the university, only to hear on the news that the vote counts for Gore and Bush are much closer to each other in Florida than was thought, and that the votes have to be counted again.
Heh. On the nine o’clock news this morning, our radio station had a quote from the latest CNN news:
“CNN declares George Walker Bush the 43rd president of the United States!”
Oh yeah? So they actually think the media declare someone president? Now that it turns out he may not have won after all, it seems even more ironic.
I do still hope that it’s the people that elect the president, not the media.
Have any elections ever been so close?
Näheres gibt es auch bei der Zeit zu lesen – aktuelle Meldungen jeweils hier.
US Elections
So Bush has won. Ugh! 
Results are here in the NY Times (link via Garret) – oder hier beim Spiegel (Link von Jörg).
I’m going to the university now. See you later…