I wasn't aware of the Finnish vote counting system until late '93 when an old friend and a namesake of mine told me that. Thanks for sharing it! Ever since it's been common knowledge to me, but not for all I guess. Today I read from Hairy's post (link in the right column) that the Swedes have a different way of counting it. Kind of interesting, if you like boring stuff. Which I obviously do.
In Finland, we have a D'Hondt method in use. It's in quite common a use in several countries. The main idea of it is that the most voted person in a party gets all the party votes for him/herself. The second best gets the half of the whole pool of votes. The third gets a third and so on, until we have run out of candidates or votes.
This method seems to be widely critized. For example I remember one person getting almost 20000 votes but still didn't get in, whereas several persons who got under 10000 votes were elected instead. The person in question wasn't representing any major party, while the others got help from more popular fellow politicians.
When it comes to the results of the EU election in Finland, it was somewhat interesting. The absence of the left-wing is striking. I'm glad that the Green party got two competent representatives in. My candidate wasn't chosen but I don't care. I did my share anyway.
I can't understand why Sweden chose two Pirate Party members to represent themselves in EU parliament. To me it shows the same kind of devil-may-care attitude towards European Union as they have had with their ever-dropping currency. I had back flashes of European Song Contest behavior from last year, when this Swedish clown was mocking the contest by making an ass of himself. And the Swedes cheered. This looks like a similar situation.
New EU countries didn't vote eagerly. It seems evident that they are not ready to rumble. The concept of being an EU citizen hasn't properly materialized to most of them yet. Well, actually, that applies to many old EU members as well. These opinions coming from a mouth of a non-political loud-mouth, well, just might convince someone. I take no responsibility whatsoever if it does, LOL!
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I was also pretty surprised by the Pirate Party thing. People here are arguing that the Pirate Party stands for more than just file sharing. That they are fighting for internet rights and freedom of internet and all of that. Of course, they fail to mention that the party has absolutely no views on any of the other important issues. Like foreign affairs. Or the environment. Or the economy.
ReplyDeleteYes, exactly! What if they are given the responsibility to take care of EU's economy or immigration issues? If they get no opportunity to decide about internet rights in EU, what are they going to do there? Just hang out and have fun? Maybe that's what their voters wanted in the first place..? No room for clowns in EU parliament. That being said, I hope that Veltto Virtanen, a Finnish debuty for Timo Soini, won't get to be there!
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