Dear Jobst, you wrote (16 Nov 2001): > Some additional peculiarity: Although it was one vote on both > questions simultaneously, the decision *rule* was *not* the > same for the two parts: the factual proposal only needed the > simple majority of the votes, that is, excluding the abstentions, > but the vote of confidence needed at least 334 votes to pass. > Therefore, if some representatives (of the FDP, say) had > decided to abstain, this could have had the effect that the > factual porposal would have passed but the vote of confidence > not.
I consider the two different majority requirements to be a bug. Actually, already the constitutional commission in the 1970s considered them to be a bug. The commission suggested that a vote of confidence should be passed when "ayes > noes". However, the parliament ignored the report of the commission. Markus Schulze
