Indirect election

• the election of the United States president and the vice president is indirect election. Voters elect the Electoral College, which then elects the president. The Electoral College is a controversial issue in American politics, as the Electoral College vote may not agree with the popular vote.
• The president of the European Commission is nominated by the European Council and confirmed or denied by the directly elected European Parliament.
• in the United Kingdom, the prime minister usually is a member of the House of Commons, the lower, elected house of Parliament, and is the leader of the political party with the most seats able to command a majority either outright or by agreement with other parties. Similar arrangements are used in the devolved assemblies and most local councils.
• in Spain, the Congress of Deputies votes on a motion of confidence of the king's nominee and the nominee's political manifesto, an example of an indirect election of the prime minister of Spain.
• Many countries with parliamentary systems elect their head of state indirectly. In most of these, head of state is merely a ceremonial figurehead with limited power.
• Political party nominees can be indirectly elected in party conventions, such as in the United States. Local caucus attendants vote for delegates, who vote for a nominee in state conventions.

• the German Bundesrat, where voters elect the Landtag members, who then elect the state government, which then appoints its members to the Bundesrat
• In France, election to the upper house of Parliament, the Sénat, is indirect. Electors are locally elected representatives.
• the Indian Rajya Sabha is indirectly elected, largely by state legislatures; Manmohan Singh was a member of the Rajya Sabha but chosen by the majority party in the Lok Sabha as the prime minister in 2004; as such, Singh as prime minister had never won a direct or popular election; introduced as a "technocrat"
• the United States Senate was indirectly elected by state legislatures until, after a number of attempts over the previous century, the 17th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified in 1913.

• 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
• most bodies formed of representatives of national governments, e.g. the United Nations General Assembly, can be considered indirectly elected