So I was reading this article ( https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/20/opinion/republicans-democracy-play-dirty.html ) and came across this quote:
Take German conservatives before World War I. They were haunted by the prospect of extending equal voting rights to the working class. They viewed equal (male) suffrage as a menace not only to their own electoral prospects but also to the survival of the aristocratic order. One Conservative leader called full and equal suffrage an “attack on the laws of civilization.” So German conservatives played dirty, engaging in rampant election manipulation and outright repression in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Could somebody expand/explain on this? I'm not so familiar with Pre-WWI Germany; is this claim true? And if so, how/why/what context? Who could vote in Germany in this era?
Every men that was 25 and older, didn't lived on welfare, wasn't enlisted and didn't have a legal guardian.
The winner for an office or a seat needed a majority (50%+1). Which was often problematic in the first round to get. So often in the first round the candidate of the social democrats had the most votes. But in the second round all conservative and bourgeois and the Christian parties vote for one candidate, so the social democrats had it way harder to get into office.
This is why often the distribution of seats wasn't actually a reflection of the distribution of votes.
Winner takes it all.
I hope this helped.