Backgrounder: Germany's electoral system

Following is a brief introduction about the electoral system in Germany.

General elections usually are held every four years. The Basic Law guarantees the right to vote by secret ballot in direct and free elections to every German citizen eighteen years of age or older.

To be eligible to vote, an individual must have resided in a constituency district for at least three months prior to an election.

Each voter casts two ballots in the general election or Bundestag election. The elector's first vote is cast for a candidate running to represent a particular district. The candidate who receives a plurality of votes becomes the district representative.

Germany is divided into 328 electoral districts with roughly 180,000 voters in each district. Half of the Bundestag members are directly elected from these districts.

The voter's second ballot is cast for a particular political party. These second votes determine each party's share of the popular vote and also determines how many Bundestag seats each party will receive.

If a party wins more constituency seats than it is entitled to according to its share of the vote in the second ballot, the party retains those seats, and the size of the Bundestag is increased. That's why each Bundestag has different numbers of seats, for instance, after the 1990 election, the total number of seats in the Bundestag rose from 656 to 662.

Only those parties which win over five percent of all the registered votes, or three constituency seats, are allowed to get any representation in the Bundestag.

Following the general election, the federal president nominates a chancellor candidate to the newly-elected Bundestag, and the chancellor is elected by majority vote in the body.

The chancellor may make use no-confidence vote to gain legislative support in the Bundestag. If the Bundestag approves a no-confidence vote, the chancellor may request that the president dissolve parliament and call new elections.

In July, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder deliberately failed in a constructive-confidence vote. President Roman Herzog, on Schroeder 's request, announced the general election is advanced one year earlier.