Having condemned this method of election, the committee adopted the proposal that seemed to them most opposed to this: that candidate should be elected who received on the first ballot the largest number of votes (a relative majority). If this system did away with some of the inconveniences of balloting, there nevertheless could be urged against it and with greater force the same objection as filed against the preceding proposition, viz., that, given the division of political parties as it was, a man could be called to the head of the nation who would have behind him a relatively small fraction of the German population. According to a third proposition, the second balloting could be avoided in the following fashion. The elector would be permitted to indicate on the first ballot a second person to whom he would give his vote should his first candidate not obtain the necessary number of votes. This proposition had as its point of view the idea that neighbouring groups or parties could in this way and in advance effect electoral compromises in the event that none of their candidates alone should survive the first ballot. In this way there would be the advantage that a second ballot would be unnecessary. But this system was not without danger, for first of all it lacked simplicity, and again there was nothing to show that the electors would thereby abide by the agreements concluded by their parties. A well disciplined party, in which the electors held to the agreements made by the chiefs of their party would risk being put at a disadvantage by this system in relation to a party in which there was no discipline whatever. There was the danger in accepting this proposition that the elections would bring about a result that would not truly express the real wish of the people, but which would depend on the tactics and the more or less effective discipline of the parties.