Starting in 2013, the Czech Republic elects its President by popular vote. Previously, Parliament had chosen the President. Because the Czech Republic uses a parliamentary system, the Presidency is not endowed with a great deal of political power, but the Czech President does represent the nation, and chooses some judges.
The election law requires a candidate for President to have the endorsement of 10 Senators, or 20 members of the Chamber of Deputies, or submit 50,000 signatures. The Czech Republic has a population of approximately ten million; 50,000 is somewhat less than 1% of the eligible signers. Nine candidates qualified for the January 11-12, 2013 ballot. Three qualified by obtaining endorsements from members of Parliament, and six qualified with petitions. One of the six who qualified by petition was initially told she didn’t have enough valid signatures, but a court ruled that she did have enough.
No one polled as much as 50%, so a run-off was held two weeks later, which was won by Milos Zeman. Here is the wikipedia article about the election. Thanks to Thomas Jones for this news.
How many regimes of all types manage to survive by having the sovereign Electors (Voters) elect the chief executive officer of the regime ???
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
i.e. abolish the EVIL INSANE minority rule Electoral College.
the EVIL small States can go direct to political Hell – do NOT pass Go and collect a penny.
The Electoral College would only work thanks to 2 factors:
a) increasing the number of Electors every 10 years
b) allocating all Electors proportionally nationwide
It appears that the total signatures gathered for all candidates was around 500,000; though a couple of candidates who failed to qualify were said to have had many fake or duplicate signatures.
Also the turnout for the runoff was almost the same as for the first (primary) round.