Class suffrage
When class or Curia right to vote , eligible voters in groups (classes / Kurien) are divided. Affiliation can be based on class (e.g. nobility , clergy, remaining population ), place of residence, education, the occurrence of rights and obligations towards the state (tax income, conscription, obligation to provide certain funds) or other.
Naming
The naming of the electoral groups is derived from the names of electoral groups of the Roman Republic : the curiae (for example "men's assemblies") were subdivisions of the tribe in Rome , that is, groups of origin or place of residence that voted separately on certain votes; the classes ( "levies") were against the five subunits of the Roman army with general voting rights in the Centurions Zenturiatskomitien were divided, (to be provided in case of war certain weapons and equipment or the duty of the respective assets) by the taxation revenue.
Characteristic
The voting process is based on these classes. If the number of voting seats to be elected by the various classes does not correspond to the strength of the respective class, the voting system leads to the individual votes being given different weights. An example: There are three asset classes, each of which elects a representative. In the top wealth class, only one rich voter votes, in the middle class five voters and in the bottom class 50. Then the vote of the rich counts as much as the five votes of the middle voters or the 50 of the poor. A variant of the class suffrage is the census suffrage : while the class suffrage affects the equality of the election, the census suffrage abolishes the generality of the election by completely excluding certain asset classes.
Examples
In addition to the class suffrage of antiquity, especially of the Roman Republic , the Prussian three-class suffrage (at the state level until 1918) and the curial suffrage in Cisleithanien (Reichsrat until 1907, regional parliaments and municipal councils until 1918) are known from the modern era .
For the eight-class suffrage in Bremen see: History of the City of Bremen 1850 to 1899 .
A type of class voting right also applies in many company and employee meetings, university and school parliaments, where the various subgroups are given a fixed number of seats. In this sense, the election to the European Parliament is also subject to class voting rights that are linked to the place of residence or country of origin.
In the philosophy of the state, considerations of class suffrage based on the example of the ancient states often play a role: The English philosopher and politician John Stuart Mill , for example, called for class suffrage based on intelligence, on the grounds that only people with a minimum level of intelligence are able to to see through the complexity of politics.
Web links
- Curia elections in the Austria Lexicon