Direct election is a term describing a system of choosing political officeholders in which the voters directly cast ballots for the person, persons or political party that they desire to see elected. The method by which the winner or winners of a direct election are chosen depends upon the electoral system used. The most commonly used systems are the plurality system and the two round system for single winner elections, such as a presidential election, and party-list proportional representation for the election of a legislature.
By contrast in an indirect election, the voters cast elect an assembly which in turn elects the officeholder in question. Some examples of indirectly elected bodies would include:
the Parliamentary Assemblies of the Council of Europe, OSCE, the WEU and NATO - in all of these cases, voters elect national parliamentarians, who in turn elect some of their own members to the assembly
the election of the government in most parliamentary systems - the voters elect the parliamentarians, who then elect the government from among themselves
the German Bundesrat, where voters elect the Landtag members, who then elect the state government, which then appoints its members to the Bundesrat
the election of the US President is technically indirect -- the voters elect the electoral college, who then elects the President. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would cause the Electoral College result to mirror the national popular vote.
most bodies formed of representatives of national governments, e.g. the United Nations General Assembly, can be considered indirectly elected (assuming the national governments are democratically elected in the first place, which is often not the case).
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