Voting in Germany

I was already living in Germany during the whole re-election process. I stayed up late watching the votes pour in like everybody else. I obsessed over the Merkel vs. Schroeder debate along with the best of them. But that's not what this post is about. This is about voting in everyday life, and how the Germans do it.

It was my second day at the University when I was first exposed to the German obsession with voting. I was sitting in on the planning seminar for the working group I'm a part of here. As would be expected, the planning seminar's purpose was to plan what we would cover in the seminar itself.

Five choices or so were written on the board.

"I'll read the choices and raise your hand if you agree with the choice read,"
"But how many votes do we get?"
"Each person will vote as many times as he wants."
Mumbles of approval.

So we all voted for as many choices as we wanted. The choice with the smallest votes was erased, and the we voted again on the remaining ones. We proceeded four times, until only one was left standing. Good, that's managed, no we know what we're going to talk about for the semester.

"Now we need to decide when we are going to go for lunch."

The following choices were written on the board.

11:00
11:15
11:30
11:45
12:00
12:15
12:30
12:45
1:00
1:15
1:30
1:45
2:00

Much to my dismay, the process repeated itself. "Who wants 11:00? who wants 11:15?...who wants 2?" Votes counted, one choice erased. Repeat.

Ok, I thought to myself, this has lasted almost an hour, now it must be over.

"Now we need to decide where we are going to eat, EG Nord, EG Sud, MG Nord, MG Sud, OG Nord, or OG Sud."

I don't need to tell you what happened next. After more than an hour, we had decided to read and give talks on a book by Kleshchev, and to eat at 12:15 in OG Sud. We did it. It was decided.

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Two weeks later the dictatorial powers at be (namely the two professors) changed the lunchtime to 11:50.