The European Elections

[faceless]

Person with dual citizenship can apparently vote twice in upcoming European Parliament elections
In Sweden one person entitled to vote receives two voting slips, another none
HELSINGIN SANOMAT
19th May 2009

If one holds the citizenship of two different EU countries, either through birth or naturalisation, can one vote in both countries in the June European Parliament elections? This question, which one would assume contains a "No" answer, was prompted in Sweden, when the postman dropped voting slips from both Finland and Sweden into the mailbox of a person with a dual citizenship. On the other hand, just to confuse things, the person’s adult daughter did not get a slip from either country, though she also enjoys dual citizenship status.

"Yes. In principle one can! In the European elections every voter has only one vote. Those with a dual citizenship status, however, are entitled to vote in both countries”, replies Arto Jääskeläinen, Elections Director at the Finnish Ministry of Justice. It is a question of a loophole in the election system. In practice, voting in two countries by those holding dual citizenship is not monitored in any way. “The EU Commission is aware of the situation, but it has not wanted to interfere with it.”

From the democracy point of view, the loophole presents an obvious problem: voting is a basic right, but each person should only have one vote. This is stated in the EU decree on voting.“At the very least this should be discussed within the Commission before the next EU election. The rules of the game should be clear even for those holding dual citizenship”, Jääskeläinen emphasises.

--------------------

[faceless]

This is the SSP's election video which was broadcast this evening.

[faceless]

Libertas candidate falls for comedian’s joke

Malta’s candidate for the pan-European party Libertas was the unwitting butt of a practical joke while attending an EU-funded meeting in Sweden on adult education this week. According to a blog post by British comedian Ben Kersley, he came to the conference dressed as a hack journalist, to ask ridiculous questions to the delegates present – such as ‘why were they planning to teach computer skills to fish’ – noting that on the whole, everyone played along.

But Mary Gauci turned out to be an exception, as Kersley comments on his blog: “This Maltese politico was charismatic and I’m sure highly intelligent, but failed to cotton on the fact that I was not really writing about the conference. She felt it important to try and electioneer to me, a comedian in Sweden, to try and win votes for a European election in Malta!

“She was also rather gullible. I can only thank her as she became the centre of the performance and drew laughter from the other delegates. Our ‘double act’ went like this:

“Where are you from?"

"Malta."

“Which country is that in?"

"It’s an independent country!"

“Is it? I’ve never heard of it. What country does it border with?"

"It’s an island!"

“Oh. It’s in Ireland… Do you speak Irish then?”

Kersely said he took a group picture of the delegates and asked the ones “from the more important countries to stand at the front. Laughter. Irony…. needless to say, the MEP candidate for Malta stood right in the middle at the front with a pose that said ‘democracy, transparency, accountability’.”

----------------

[luke]

theres a good little site here http://www.votematch.co.uk/ which asks you questions and then works out which party best suits your answers

my results

Green Party 61/69
Mebyon Kernow 51/69
Liberal Democrats 40/69
Libertas 40/69
Conservative Party 36/69
UK Independence Party 28/69
Labour Party 26/69

i was going to vote green anyway mebron kernow i'd never heard of, but they're the party for cornwall http://www.mebyonkernow.org/ i don't think i could vote for them after the furore from cornwall over devon winning the cornish pasty contest

[faceless]

Liberal Democrats 53/73
Scottish Green Party 49/73
Scottish National Party 43/73
UK Independence Party 28/73

------------------

That's a surprise that I came up as a Liberal Democrat, but they didn't even seem to have the SSP included.

[seshme]

[seshme]

[faceless]

that's the one question that I thought stood out as utterly stupid. Who would think that?

[Twirley]

Oooh...I'm going to try this out. I'm a cross between green and democrat here; will be interesting to see what I lean towards for the UK.

[modern]

...why aren't No2EU Yes to Democracy showing up???

[luke]

maybe for the same reasons the ssp isn't showing up?

all parties should be included though, i've seen nothing about no2eu anywhere! its mad, theres been quite a bit of coverage for the bnp/the right, but anything left like no2eu - not a word

[seshme]

Yeah it's a bit silly because the whole point of a site like that is surely for floating voters to see if there is a party they don't know about that they might like to vote for.

[modern]

NO2EU - yes to democracy

We are not anti-European but we are anti-EU. The European Union
is a bosses’ club that acts in the interests of big business and the
super rich at the expense of ordinary people.

The European constitution forces member states to privatise public
services so millions suffer while a tiny few get even richer.

Ordinary people are treated with contempt. Billions are found
to bail out the banks but there’s nothing for the millions facing
unemployment, debt and uncertainty.

Now MPs have been caught out fiddling their expenses. They should
be kicked out immediately.”

- Will get my vote tomorrow.

[faceless]

I see the BNP have already one won seat, in the Essex/East Anglia region. And there's only been two constituencies results back so far...

edit: scratch that, it looks like the Guardian got the BNP and UKIP mixed up. As you do.

edit2: and they've done it again... they're listing Godfrey Bloom as a BNP win for Yorkshire. Here's his UKIP site:

www.godfreybloommep.co.uk

[modern]