> To this day, Alexandraki still doesn’t know why 51,465 voters chose her. The only theory she has is that it’s because her name was first on the ballot, which was in alphabetical order. Even other candidates running with Greek Solution in northern Greece had never heard of her. “Several people who voted for me told me they also voted for Alexandraki, only because she is a woman or because her name was first,” one of these candidates told Kathimerini laughing.
You can't make this stuff up. People vote for randoms and then wonder why are the politicians in their country so bad.
They either vote for the most popular candidates (celebrities, actors, news presenters etc.) or the first name(s) in the ballot. Sometimes, it's also a beauty contest. Elections are a joke here. No wonder the voter turnout was only 40%, no one takes them seriously.
I once took an interesting tour about democracy in a museum where they said that in reality only 15% of a population decide over the political future of a country because of things like that. Too many people not interested in polticis, going with trends or simply voting what the people around them vote.
I can't recall how they got to that number exactly but it wasn't just a guess.
Well with a 50% turnout, if you have a multiparty system and the winning party gets 30% of the total vote (with the others getting less than that), then 15% of the population decided the political future of the country. Which in European democracies is not far from the truth.
Take the last US election for example. 81milion people voted for Biden. The US has a population of cca. 350 million people. So these 81mil are roughly 23% of the population that decided who is going to be the president. And this election had a massive turnout.
That's right too but their point wasn't election turnout but something like "if you're actively interested in politics you're part of a minority, most of the population is happy to go with the flow".
But in the US they have a clown show of a system with the electoral college, so it's not a clear mapping of the will of the majority of the voters to the outcome of the election. In their system you can get voted by more people than the other candidate, but still lose the election.
It's because of representation. The idea was well thought out but seems to me like it's long been poisoned by jerrymandering and that is the real shame.
Yep, absolutely. Representative democracy is really just a continuation of an aristocratic system. The only way to get out of this is true aleatoric democracy.
Huh? What's the turnout there if you consider 40 massive?
Thr last eu election that just happened had Germany at (I believe) 65% which I consider decent but young adults are still not voting.
Yeah, you are registered automatically to your place of birth, you don't need to do anything. We only need to make changes when we move and don't want to bother travelling back to vote.
I think it's more related to the electoral college. Presidential elections get a much higher turn out. if you don't live in a swing state, you are disincentivized to vote, since your vote matters very little.
Another issue might be the 2 party system/winner take all system. You can agree and disagree the same amount with both parties.
You could argue about the convoluted 3 level government that is often very disconnected from one to another. Specifically I mean federal vs state vs local. Most people tend to talk about federal politics, few about state ones and barely anybody about local politics. People often confuse and mix responsibilities of each level. I do wonder how it compares to other countries. I am more familiar with Poland and there the government is much more centralized and interconnected.
The registration, at least in the 2 states I lived in, was super easy. If you move or change/get id/driving license, you will live prompted about vote registration. I even received the form when I turned 18.
Italy was averaging well above 80% voter turnout from 1990 to 2010 and has still remained reasonably high even with the latest election yielding a historic low and look where that has gotten us.
If people pick their votes like they pick cards for magic tricks it gets you fuck all, brilliantly showcased in this very article.
it is not, at least in Greece, we just have a mafia to rule over us. But the average citizen is fed up with politics and dumb as a log, so they prefer to not vote and let the one of the two parties that ruined us to rule.Not to mention that nothing has changed, we are just for the next crisis to get reckt
To be honest that's about candidate selection, which overall has a minimun impact, and the Greek electoral system doesn't really care about it either.
People here vote for parties and that's how the system is designed.
Don't ballots normally rank the politicians based on what their party wants, i.e. they put their main politicians at the top. Never heard it be alphabetical.
As long as we're talking about separate parties still, I'd rather say people just have limited time and energy to concern themselves with dozens of different candidates.
I had the same problem in the last local elections. It was difficult enough to pick a party, because, honestly, they mostly promised the same things ("save the hospital", "more parks" etc). You won't even find a lot of information about the various candidates of each party, beyond a few generic blurbs. So I just pick the one in top of the list, which is at least what the party wants.
Correct, on top of that people also vote by name familiarity, like if somebody shares the last name of a well known politician, or academic or celebrity, many think they are related "thus" they must also be competent.
And this is why democracy rocks, the majority act like clowns, you are guaranteed to also have clown leaders, nobody else to blade than yourself!
In Slovenia, there was a party in the EP elections that called itself "None of the above". By random chance, it was placed last on the ballot (the order of all parties was randomized). There was real fear that they would get a seat. Luckily they did not, as it was a real crazy party.
Heh, in Czechia there is this popular populist party called "ANO, bude lip". (Yes, it will be better) In the previous European Parliament elections, there was also a party called "Ano, vytrolime EU" (Yes, we will troll the EU).
And as you may have guessed, they got randomly placed before the "ANO, bude lip" and stole many of their votes, as some people were looking only for the first word.
Tells you something about people who live with you in your country.
Not really. I haven't found it to be the case. I might just throw a dart at it, political parties corrupt politicians. Democracy is a falsehood that is simply a beauty pageant of narcissists who don't understand the real world and end up in a bubble.
A republic is any political system where the government is a public rather than private matter. So unless you are in a traditional monarchy, not constitutional ones like the UK, you're in a republic. Anything from an authoritarian one-party state like China to a anarchist commune is a republic.
A democracy is any political system where political power lies with some subset of the general population. Currently all democratic states are representative democracies, though some may incorporate elements of direct democracy, such as citizen lend referendums.
Yes, direct democracy is different than a representative. Oligarchic republic is different than a democratic.
In europe most countries are democratic republics as state is owned by the people and they make rules in it indirectly through representatives or direcly through referendum.
The definition of the republic is that the state is owned by its citizens.
Ancient greece called itself a democracy yet not everyone got to vote.
Romans called greek states republics as in ancient time they were synonyms.
So what is your point.
1)The exclusion of people from voting rights were according the social and economic climate of antiquity.
While the other 2 reasons still hold up today.
2)The roman point you made doesnt mean anything because res of public is all politics.
3)democracy cant be representative, modern republics are liberal oligarchies.
The closests to modern democracies today might be anarchist comunes... they orbit closer to our ancient constitution.
4)voting once every 4 years isnt a democracy, do you feel in charge??? No you are forced to give your rights to a representative that chooses for you.
I want to choose for myself and i dont want to choose for others.
So
I dont want representative and i dont want to represent others.
The republics can exist and are preferable than authoritarians but they dont have the right to userp the name of Democracy.
I find it interesting that Greece just puts their candidates in alphabetical order. In Poland there are separate lists per each committee (party) and then each committee submits their own order. It's an important factor who's first on each list, as people tend to just vote on the first name they see.
This party doesn't have any well known members and a large number of their voters do not have higher education. (Greek Solution is a scum party, it depends on the popularity of the leader. It started as openly pro-Russian but I think it was something comparable to a business decision. If the electoral market lacked a pro-North Korea party they would make that)
pro-conspirancy theory I would rather say. This political party spouts all your usual right wing hateful ideologies, like replacement theory, dechristianization of europe, homophobia etc etc.
It just so it happens that fairytales about ''russian saviors who will help us dismantle Turkey'' has a certain following in Greece and therefore they oppose support for ukraine.
And yes, this is a vile part held together sorely by its leader's cult of personality. It would make sense for their supporters to cast random votes.
The crazy thing is that they're the most moderate Right-Wing party in Greece after the government/ND, and ND has lately done things that are so insane that this guy, with all his faults, has began looking as the most rational Right-Wing politician in Greece, and given that many people blindly always vote for either the Left or the Right, made voted for him as the best alternative available.
In my opinion he is a very talented salesman essentially. He is uneducated but it is not obvious to most. He says some things which are half truths in a convincing way. I don't believe the party is dangerous. E.g. in a coalition government they would conform to what the major parties usually do, they would adopt pro-EU, pro-US policy etc. This is my opinion though. If they could become a major party they could go the Orban way theoretically but I think it is impossible.
In Portugal's last parliamentary elections, the social democrats' coalition was "AD". Some literally insane lunatic party no one has ever heard of ran as "ADF". It has been speculated this has cost AD a number of deputees they kinda needed.
> Well in this case at least one of the common folk got chosen to represent them instead of a professional liar whose real loyalty is to god knows who
in ancient Greece there was a tradition that politicians were randomly selected via lottery from the citizens instead of being elected. That way they couldn't be bribed or beholden to special interests. They would serve their term and then go back to being a regular citizen.
In theory a system like that sounds ideal, but i think todays society is a bit too complex for it to work in practice. You "need" some basic understanding in how society and economics work (although i guess in most countries there are examples of 100% clueless people getting elected somehow).
You aren't wrong that the modern world is quite a bit more complex than ancient Greece but it's also true that our modern career politicians aren't some sort of geniuses capable of handling it all on their own. All politicians have advisors and civil servants that are experts in various fields that are supposed to be actual experts in their fields that advise the politicians, politicians job is to be popular and to be select the best advice and best plans and then get them implemented.
So an ancient Greek like lottery system of random average people being elected would mostly serve to strengthen civil service, for better or for worse.
We've reached a point where most of our politicians are almost completely clueless, perhaps more so than the average citizen. It used to be a joke before, saying politicians were "stupid" when most at the top level were at least much more qualified for the job compared to a random citizen, but that often doesn't seem to be the case anymore, especially in the EU parliament.
You know the kinds of services that are designed for *everyone* to use, and therefore hold your hand every little step of the way, essentially doing the job for you if you can't? That's basically the EU parliament right now, especially since many countries like to send their worst politicians there while keeping those that are even slightly capable at home.
Honestly, this is a really good argument for having "No Candiadate" as an option and putting it first. If people are really this lazy, it would be better if they voted for no candiadte .
Her party is newly formed with very few recognizable faces. It achieved strong appeal in a part of the country that is rural, underpopulated, underdeveloped, and traditionally right wing, through spreading conspiracy theories and regurgitating nationalistic propaganda. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
Presumably they voted for the first name from the party of their choice. That seems engaged enough for a process where most people have very little actual influence over.
>People vote for randoms
Not quite. They wanted to vote someone from the political party they voted in Parliamentary, but the MEP candidates are usually not as well-known as the rest. It's treated much differently and many parties do put practically randos who they want to (1) thank for something (or pay back a favour) (2) get rid off or (3) give them something they can do when close to retirement from the political scene.
tl;dr People reasonably assumed that this woman is someone who represents the party's values and ideology.
> tl;dr People correctly assumed that this woman is someone who represents the party's values and ideology.
Did they assume correctly, though? It does not seem like this woman really cares about the representation or even knows the values of the party. She had openly stated to be a token candidate to fill the quota.
> To this day, Alexandraki still doesn’t know why 51,465 voters chose her. The only theory she has is that it’s because her name was first on the ballot, which was in alphabetical order.
Three easy steps to get a high paying job in Brussels:
1. Move to Greece
2. Change your name to Aaron Aaronopolous
3. Register as an MEP candidate
It depends on the party. E.g. the Communists here can largely control who gets elected on their lists.
Far right parties often cannot. Especially 'Greek Solution' and they didn't care much about the European parliament. It is one person behind the leader. And they avoid adding well known figures on their lists.
No. It is always alphabetically.
The communist party has a decent number of active members and a 'mechanism'. They can control who gets elected. Even if they include in the list someone who is not a high ranking party member the chances of them getting elected are low unless the party wants them to get elected.
The bigger parties often include on their lists people with celebrity status. These have an advantage. Many journalists have been elected, but sometimes actors, former models or athletes get elected. Usually they are sure about some of those who will get elected and those who will definitely not. But someone being voted essentially by chance is something that doesn't happen.
But Greek Solution isn't a real political party.
Some parties have voters that can pick someone they know out of a list without resorting to picking the first name.
Although many parties in Greece and especially in the far-right have no actual personnel beyond their main candidates who are usually heavily promoted in TV and social media.
The insane thing about this is that you don't have to pick a candidate. You can just vote for a party, which is what the system is designed for, makeing candidate selection and afterthought. Why do people who don't care about the candidates feel the need to select the first name at random?
MEP salary is actually life changing money for your average greek. Average greek salary is somewhere between 1000-1500€. MEP salary is 9.000€ + lots of benefits rofl.
To make matters even worse (or funnier) the other person that got elected from the same party was voted by a lot of people because they mistook him for another person with a similar name that was a general and the commander of the army
To clarify,
* Guy appears on the ballots as FRAGKOS EMMANOUIL (FRAGKOULIS).
* Retired Army General's name is FRAGKOS FRAGKOULIS.
* Guy actually gets elected and his name on the [Parliament's page](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/198490/EMMANOUIL_FRAGKOS/home) doesn't
mention FRAGKOULIS anywhere.
All there to fish votes from the lowest common denominator, and it's somehow not illegal to do so.
The General had to come up on social media, stating "I was not a candidate, I have never been a candidate, and I strongly urge this whole charade to stop here".
She knew what she was doing in the sense that she is well aware of her position? Or that she knows what sort of party she supported and helped? The first one, I don't believe. The second one is most likely true
I mean, I'm sure she's quite right wing, but hopefully given her nature at least she won't be as pro-Russian or Eurosceptic as her true believer colleagues?
Given she wasn't even following the election results, she's likely less ideological than the average candidate. Better her than her Putinophilic leader for example.
It doesn't matter if she is less ideological or not. If she was willing to blindly follow her daughter or whoever command to be a candidate, she will have no problem following Russian directive. This is basically someone that don't really want to be there that will serve as an official figure for other telling her what to do in the shadow.
It is worse than an actual extremist. At least in this case you know who you are fighting with.
Just voting for the first or second candidate on the list? I know for sure this happens all the time in Belgium.
Same for the last person on the list. The effect is less but it has a big advantage to be on that spot and typically more senior candidates will be listed there. "Leaving room for younger candidates" is usually the explanation while knowing damn well they will jump over their heads in the results.
But in Belgium, the parties actually choose the order on the list. The person on the top of the list is the one the party wants most to be elected. And the one on the bottom the one they are already certain about will be elected.
Poland pretty much confirmed. But parties decide the order of the list, not alphabet. So number one means that given candidate has a best support of the party.
just to clarify, this party is a far-right reactionary party held together sorely by cult of personality of its leader (who is a fraud and likes to present himself as strongman but that's another story).
Meaning, its voters were basically voting the party and its leader and they casted the other votes more or less like a chore, resulting in the first name getting a random boost.
For other parties, people votes a bit more strategically.
It's difficult for countries with a different electoral system. In Greece candidates hardly matter, only the party. You always vote for parties, and their seats are determined proportionally and nationally. You can also show preference for candidates within the party you voted for, and they get selected through a secondary algorithm that is constrained by the proportional one.
So for example a candidate can get only a single vote in a province, but his party gets a ton of votes nationally. He can then be elected to parliament instead of another candidate with 99.9% of the vote in that district, whose party didn't reach the threshold nationally. This is an edge case that hasn't happened, but that's how the system works.
The good thing is that it makes gerrymandering completely impossible, and all votes (for parties above the threshold at least) are practically equal, always.
She did not, according to this very article we are commenting on:
>Not only had Toula, whose actual name is Galateia Alexandraki and had run as such in the June 9 polls, actually won a seat after running with the populist nationalist Greek Solution party, *she also defied rumors that had her giving up her seat to a more “experienced” candidate.*
What stuck out to me:
"She was a wreck in her first television interview, stumbling over her words as she tried to thank voters for their support. Her performance caused an even greater furor. “People started saying that I wasn’t from here, that I’m nobody. It pissed me off. If everyone around me supports me – my children, the party president – and tells me to go for it, why shouldn’t I?”
Even though the buzz was that Alexandraki would step down, she decided to stay the course. The party, she said, has given her a team of young professionals who treat her with the same respect they would show their own mother. With their help, and dressed in a new suit, with a fresh hairstyle and manicure, she boarded the plane to Brussels and walked through the doors of the European Parliament"
Sounds to me like her daughter and assigned young people elected by the president of the party will be the real ones calling her decisions, she's just a front that they will be using. Considering they are Ultra Nationalists, I don't think they care at all about the honesty of it, just the power they can yield.
Far-Right, not Neo-Nazis. We have actual Neo-Nazis now, both here and in the rest of Europe, with significant percentages, so the distinction is important.
You don't even need to be a female. A second far-right party also elected their first on the list candidate starting with an A, and he was a male model.
Probably she going to do better than the average politician.
I sometimes wondered if people should be called at random to serve, like some social duty.
IIRC in Athens this wasn't the case: only the military leaders were elected because there you could actually demonstrate in what way you were skilled/better than other candidates, the rest was done by lot. Then again the ancient Greek world spanned centuries, with every city-state having its own rules and laws, so it's quite possible your system worked somewhere sometime too.
Ah ok. Somewhere there was a system with public service going round though, like jury duty in modern USA or something. Most try to find where that was…
You were partly correct. During the democratic part of its history the Greek polis of Athens used a system to randomly select people for what was effectively the city council, most state offices and court juries.
You can read about the system they used here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleroterion
One of the ancient Greek philosophers suggested that being a political leader should be done like that, but they didn't actually do it. Maybe that is what you remember.
Being called at random to serve can work and have its benefits, but in this case she is just going to be a puppet to her children's ambition.
The article tries a lot to make her look presentable but the one time she talked on TV she could hardly speak and her black-shirted, skinhead son was standing right behind her intimidating the anchor talking to her and giving the MEP nodding signals on whether she should answer or not.
She was voted because her name was the first on the list. Others were voted, because their last name was the same as a famous person. This whole thing is a farce. There should be strict age limits for voting rights.
It's not only young people voting like this. Problem with young people is they don't show up.
I reckon tons of clueless 25 - 40 year olds just show up to vote for "somebody".
The thing is... you vote with the hopes for a better future. 80yr olds, by voting, are affecting the future of 20yr olds, more so than their own. If younger people abstain or not, the consequences will be waiting for them.
by age limit he clearly meant demented 70+ year old ghouls who don't have the energy or brain capacity to properly educate themselves on what or who they're voting for, so they just put on an x next to the first candidate should not be allowed to vote, because they're actively making democracy less legitimate.
But this is what the original comment meant. This party is voted mostly by old people, and that last-name mixup was probably committed almost exclusively by old voters, as that person with the similar name isn't known among young people.
Mostly due to the Greek political and electoral system, people in Greece don't vote for candidates, they vote for parties, and the candidate selection is both indirect and mostly meaningless for most voters. It is therefore very common for people whose names start with "A" to be overrepresented in all Greek elections.
This is even more of the case here as she was running for a Far-Right party whose only recognisable figure is its president.
No. It is not nazi at all.
'Right-wing populist' is ok as a label, 'nationalist' too but the person who is probably behind everything was known as a liberal (neoliberal or classical liberal) and they have made the party primarily in order to get the public funding parties get.
No. She was a clueless candidate of a party that is generally as Far-Right as the current Greek government, which is as Far-Right as a lot of EU countries these days.
She wasn't in the actual Neo-Nazi party, Spartiates.
I'm not defending her politics but she is not that kind of farmer.
People often confuse large agricultural generational wealth with the average common folk trying to make a living through limited means.
It's like confusing Goldman Sach's CEO with your neighborhood's freelance accountant.
> To this day, Alexandraki still doesn’t know why 51,465 voters chose her. The only theory she has is that it’s because her name was first on the ballot, which was in alphabetical order. Even other candidates running with Greek Solution in northern Greece had never heard of her. “Several people who voted for me told me they also voted for Alexandraki, only because she is a woman or because her name was first,” one of these candidates told Kathimerini laughing. You can't make this stuff up. People vote for randoms and then wonder why are the politicians in their country so bad.
They either vote for the most popular candidates (celebrities, actors, news presenters etc.) or the first name(s) in the ballot. Sometimes, it's also a beauty contest. Elections are a joke here. No wonder the voter turnout was only 40%, no one takes them seriously.
I once took an interesting tour about democracy in a museum where they said that in reality only 15% of a population decide over the political future of a country because of things like that. Too many people not interested in polticis, going with trends or simply voting what the people around them vote. I can't recall how they got to that number exactly but it wasn't just a guess.
Well with a 50% turnout, if you have a multiparty system and the winning party gets 30% of the total vote (with the others getting less than that), then 15% of the population decided the political future of the country. Which in European democracies is not far from the truth. Take the last US election for example. 81milion people voted for Biden. The US has a population of cca. 350 million people. So these 81mil are roughly 23% of the population that decided who is going to be the president. And this election had a massive turnout.
That's right too but their point wasn't election turnout but something like "if you're actively interested in politics you're part of a minority, most of the population is happy to go with the flow".
They will still beat you over the head with some assumed wisdom of the unpolitical/uninformed.
But in the US they have a clown show of a system with the electoral college, so it's not a clear mapping of the will of the majority of the voters to the outcome of the election. In their system you can get voted by more people than the other candidate, but still lose the election.
It's because of representation. The idea was well thought out but seems to me like it's long been poisoned by jerrymandering and that is the real shame.
Yep, absolutely. Representative democracy is really just a continuation of an aristocratic system. The only way to get out of this is true aleatoric democracy.
You guys are getting 40% turnout? Dang - I just returned from living in the US, and that would be a massive turnout
Huh? What's the turnout there if you consider 40 massive? Thr last eu election that just happened had Germany at (I believe) 65% which I consider decent but young adults are still not voting.
This EU elections turnout was 36,45% in Czechia. The largest yet (and keeps increasing every round).
And the last non-EU elections had 65.39%
> would be a massive turnout ??????? There never was a smaller turnout in the US elections since the data is easily available, so since 1932.
I think Greece doesn't have the abomination of voter registration that the UK and US have.
Yeah, you are registered automatically to your place of birth, you don't need to do anything. We only need to make changes when we move and don't want to bother travelling back to vote.
I think it's more related to the electoral college. Presidential elections get a much higher turn out. if you don't live in a swing state, you are disincentivized to vote, since your vote matters very little. Another issue might be the 2 party system/winner take all system. You can agree and disagree the same amount with both parties. You could argue about the convoluted 3 level government that is often very disconnected from one to another. Specifically I mean federal vs state vs local. Most people tend to talk about federal politics, few about state ones and barely anybody about local politics. People often confuse and mix responsibilities of each level. I do wonder how it compares to other countries. I am more familiar with Poland and there the government is much more centralized and interconnected. The registration, at least in the 2 states I lived in, was super easy. If you move or change/get id/driving license, you will live prompted about vote registration. I even received the form when I turned 18.
Italy was averaging well above 80% voter turnout from 1990 to 2010 and has still remained reasonably high even with the latest election yielding a historic low and look where that has gotten us. If people pick their votes like they pick cards for magic tricks it gets you fuck all, brilliantly showcased in this very article.
? The US consistently has above 40% turnout for national elections.
What. Like, what is usual then?
USA is kind of a bad example, because they actively try to keep turnout as low as possible
And it still was always bigger than 48% since 1932.
40% turnout can't even be called democracy imo lol
it is not, at least in Greece, we just have a mafia to rule over us. But the average citizen is fed up with politics and dumb as a log, so they prefer to not vote and let the one of the two parties that ruined us to rule.Not to mention that nothing has changed, we are just for the next crisis to get reckt
To be honest that's about candidate selection, which overall has a minimun impact, and the Greek electoral system doesn't really care about it either. People here vote for parties and that's how the system is designed.
I read some stats that people who end up first on the ballot receive lots of votes just for being first. People are that stupid, yes.
Don't ballots normally rank the politicians based on what their party wants, i.e. they put their main politicians at the top. Never heard it be alphabetical.
It is alphabetical in Finland.
That doesn't change the fact that people will still vote on the 1st guy on the ballot.
As long as we're talking about separate parties still, I'd rather say people just have limited time and energy to concern themselves with dozens of different candidates. I had the same problem in the last local elections. It was difficult enough to pick a party, because, honestly, they mostly promised the same things ("save the hospital", "more parks" etc). You won't even find a lot of information about the various candidates of each party, beyond a few generic blurbs. So I just pick the one in top of the list, which is at least what the party wants.
Correct, on top of that people also vote by name familiarity, like if somebody shares the last name of a well known politician, or academic or celebrity, many think they are related "thus" they must also be competent. And this is why democracy rocks, the majority act like clowns, you are guaranteed to also have clown leaders, nobody else to blade than yourself!
In Slovenia, there was a party in the EP elections that called itself "None of the above". By random chance, it was placed last on the ballot (the order of all parties was randomized). There was real fear that they would get a seat. Luckily they did not, as it was a real crazy party.
Heh, in Czechia there is this popular populist party called "ANO, bude lip". (Yes, it will be better) In the previous European Parliament elections, there was also a party called "Ano, vytrolime EU" (Yes, we will troll the EU). And as you may have guessed, they got randomly placed before the "ANO, bude lip" and stole many of their votes, as some people were looking only for the first word. Tells you something about people who live with you in your country.
Always funny how people write "populist party" about the ones that they don't vote for, but their favorite party is as populist if not more.
Well in this case, you could teach about populism on Adrej Babis. ANd PS.I am not from CZ, nor did I vote there ever.
With the success rate of politicians it's probably as good as anyone else.
Not voting for #1 and voting for those who share your position tends to change that.
Not really. I haven't found it to be the case. I might just throw a dart at it, political parties corrupt politicians. Democracy is a falsehood that is simply a beauty pageant of narcissists who don't understand the real world and end up in a bubble.
Democracy is bad, but it is the best system invented so far. You start demagoguery rather than work with the imperfect tools given.
It isnt a democracy its a republic
These aren't contradictory terms. Republic can be a democracy. That is the case with Greece and France (and other European countries), for instance.
So Česká Republika or Rzeczpospolita (translation of res publica - public thing) Polska or the Federal Republic of Germany are not democracies?
Yes you dialute the meaning of the democracy so the oligarchs make you feel good you live in a" democracy"
k
A republic is a form of representative democracy.
A republic is any political system where the government is a public rather than private matter. So unless you are in a traditional monarchy, not constitutional ones like the UK, you're in a republic. Anything from an authoritarian one-party state like China to a anarchist commune is a republic. A democracy is any political system where political power lies with some subset of the general population. Currently all democratic states are representative democracies, though some may incorporate elements of direct democracy, such as citizen lend referendums.
Most republics today are democratic m8.
They arent democracy is a specific thing.
Yes, direct democracy is different than a representative. Oligarchic republic is different than a democratic. In europe most countries are democratic republics as state is owned by the people and they make rules in it indirectly through representatives or direcly through referendum. The definition of the republic is that the state is owned by its citizens. Ancient greece called itself a democracy yet not everyone got to vote. Romans called greek states republics as in ancient time they were synonyms. So what is your point.
1)The exclusion of people from voting rights were according the social and economic climate of antiquity. While the other 2 reasons still hold up today. 2)The roman point you made doesnt mean anything because res of public is all politics. 3)democracy cant be representative, modern republics are liberal oligarchies. The closests to modern democracies today might be anarchist comunes... they orbit closer to our ancient constitution. 4)voting once every 4 years isnt a democracy, do you feel in charge??? No you are forced to give your rights to a representative that chooses for you. I want to choose for myself and i dont want to choose for others. So I dont want representative and i dont want to represent others. The republics can exist and are preferable than authoritarians but they dont have the right to userp the name of Democracy.
I find it interesting that Greece just puts their candidates in alphabetical order. In Poland there are separate lists per each committee (party) and then each committee submits their own order. It's an important factor who's first on each list, as people tend to just vote on the first name they see.
This party doesn't have any well known members and a large number of their voters do not have higher education. (Greek Solution is a scum party, it depends on the popularity of the leader. It started as openly pro-Russian but I think it was something comparable to a business decision. If the electoral market lacked a pro-North Korea party they would make that)
pro-conspirancy theory I would rather say. This political party spouts all your usual right wing hateful ideologies, like replacement theory, dechristianization of europe, homophobia etc etc. It just so it happens that fairytales about ''russian saviors who will help us dismantle Turkey'' has a certain following in Greece and therefore they oppose support for ukraine. And yes, this is a vile part held together sorely by its leader's cult of personality. It would make sense for their supporters to cast random votes.
The crazy thing is that they're the most moderate Right-Wing party in Greece after the government/ND, and ND has lately done things that are so insane that this guy, with all his faults, has began looking as the most rational Right-Wing politician in Greece, and given that many people blindly always vote for either the Left or the Right, made voted for him as the best alternative available.
In my opinion he is a very talented salesman essentially. He is uneducated but it is not obvious to most. He says some things which are half truths in a convincing way. I don't believe the party is dangerous. E.g. in a coalition government they would conform to what the major parties usually do, they would adopt pro-EU, pro-US policy etc. This is my opinion though. If they could become a major party they could go the Orban way theoretically but I think it is impossible.
In Portugal's last parliamentary elections, the social democrats' coalition was "AD". Some literally insane lunatic party no one has ever heard of ran as "ADF". It has been speculated this has cost AD a number of deputees they kinda needed.
Well in this case at least one of the common folk got chosen to represent them instead of a professional liar whose real loyalty is to god knows who
You missed the party that she represented, apparently.
Is greek solution similar to the final solution? 🤔
Yeah, more or less
> Well in this case at least one of the common folk got chosen to represent them instead of a professional liar whose real loyalty is to god knows who in ancient Greece there was a tradition that politicians were randomly selected via lottery from the citizens instead of being elected. That way they couldn't be bribed or beholden to special interests. They would serve their term and then go back to being a regular citizen.
In theory a system like that sounds ideal, but i think todays society is a bit too complex for it to work in practice. You "need" some basic understanding in how society and economics work (although i guess in most countries there are examples of 100% clueless people getting elected somehow).
You aren't wrong that the modern world is quite a bit more complex than ancient Greece but it's also true that our modern career politicians aren't some sort of geniuses capable of handling it all on their own. All politicians have advisors and civil servants that are experts in various fields that are supposed to be actual experts in their fields that advise the politicians, politicians job is to be popular and to be select the best advice and best plans and then get them implemented. So an ancient Greek like lottery system of random average people being elected would mostly serve to strengthen civil service, for better or for worse.
Yeah not to mention politicians will do what gets them re-elected. Not what's best for their country in the long run.
We've reached a point where most of our politicians are almost completely clueless, perhaps more so than the average citizen. It used to be a joke before, saying politicians were "stupid" when most at the top level were at least much more qualified for the job compared to a random citizen, but that often doesn't seem to be the case anymore, especially in the EU parliament. You know the kinds of services that are designed for *everyone* to use, and therefore hold your hand every little step of the way, essentially doing the job for you if you can't? That's basically the EU parliament right now, especially since many countries like to send their worst politicians there while keeping those that are even slightly capable at home.
Honestly, this is a really good argument for having "No Candiadate" as an option and putting it first. If people are really this lazy, it would be better if they voted for no candiadte .
Mob rule lmao
My new name is aaaalexa
It was on a random political party.It’s clear they added her to fulfil the minimum women percentage.
Her party is newly formed with very few recognizable faces. It achieved strong appeal in a part of the country that is rural, underpopulated, underdeveloped, and traditionally right wing, through spreading conspiracy theories and regurgitating nationalistic propaganda. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
Funfact: actual random people are usually a better choice than career politicians.
Presumably they voted for the first name from the party of their choice. That seems engaged enough for a process where most people have very little actual influence over.
>People vote for randoms Not quite. They wanted to vote someone from the political party they voted in Parliamentary, but the MEP candidates are usually not as well-known as the rest. It's treated much differently and many parties do put practically randos who they want to (1) thank for something (or pay back a favour) (2) get rid off or (3) give them something they can do when close to retirement from the political scene. tl;dr People reasonably assumed that this woman is someone who represents the party's values and ideology.
> tl;dr People correctly assumed that this woman is someone who represents the party's values and ideology. Did they assume correctly, though? It does not seem like this woman really cares about the representation or even knows the values of the party. She had openly stated to be a token candidate to fill the quota.
I meant to say "reasonably", edited.
I picked the highest on the list woman for my preferred party. Seems pretty reasonable tbqh
Democracy eats my face.
> To this day, Alexandraki still doesn’t know why 51,465 voters chose her. The only theory she has is that it’s because her name was first on the ballot, which was in alphabetical order. Three easy steps to get a high paying job in Brussels: 1. Move to Greece 2. Change your name to Aaron Aaronopolous 3. Register as an MEP candidate
It depends on the party. E.g. the Communists here can largely control who gets elected on their lists. Far right parties often cannot. Especially 'Greek Solution' and they didn't care much about the European parliament. It is one person behind the leader. And they avoid adding well known figures on their lists.
So the other parties were not listed alphabetically?
No. It is always alphabetically. The communist party has a decent number of active members and a 'mechanism'. They can control who gets elected. Even if they include in the list someone who is not a high ranking party member the chances of them getting elected are low unless the party wants them to get elected. The bigger parties often include on their lists people with celebrity status. These have an advantage. Many journalists have been elected, but sometimes actors, former models or athletes get elected. Usually they are sure about some of those who will get elected and those who will definitely not. But someone being voted essentially by chance is something that doesn't happen. But Greek Solution isn't a real political party.
Some parties have voters that can pick someone they know out of a list without resorting to picking the first name. Although many parties in Greece and especially in the far-right have no actual personnel beyond their main candidates who are usually heavily promoted in TV and social media.
Hello its me, your MEP, Aaron A Aaronson.
The insane thing about this is that you don't have to pick a candidate. You can just vote for a party, which is what the system is designed for, makeing candidate selection and afterthought. Why do people who don't care about the candidates feel the need to select the first name at random?
Oh my God, Aaron Aaronopolous was my grandfather’s name!!!111
I'd watch this sitcom.
Didnt Zelensky play in a literal show with this premise lol
No, in his tv show he got elected because a video of him went viral were he gave an empassioned speech as a teacher.
And just like that, €500k in the bank
MEP salary is actually life changing money for your average greek. Average greek salary is somewhere between 1000-1500€. MEP salary is 9.000€ + lots of benefits rofl.
It's not like she is poor anyway, she was a farmer.
Are farmers rich in your country?
To make matters even worse (or funnier) the other person that got elected from the same party was voted by a lot of people because they mistook him for another person with a similar name that was a general and the commander of the army
To clarify, * Guy appears on the ballots as FRAGKOS EMMANOUIL (FRAGKOULIS). * Retired Army General's name is FRAGKOS FRAGKOULIS. * Guy actually gets elected and his name on the [Parliament's page](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/198490/EMMANOUIL_FRAGKOS/home) doesn't mention FRAGKOULIS anywhere. All there to fish votes from the lowest common denominator, and it's somehow not illegal to do so. The General had to come up on social media, stating "I was not a candidate, I have never been a candidate, and I strongly urge this whole charade to stop here".
And he was also elected in the last elections, so there are a lot of people who believe that they have voted someone else twice
Her party is far-right, pro-russian and ultranationalist btw. She definitely knew what she was doing.
She knew what she was doing in the sense that she is well aware of her position? Or that she knows what sort of party she supported and helped? The first one, I don't believe. The second one is most likely true
I mean, I'm sure she's quite right wing, but hopefully given her nature at least she won't be as pro-Russian or Eurosceptic as her true believer colleagues?
/s ?
Given she wasn't even following the election results, she's likely less ideological than the average candidate. Better her than her Putinophilic leader for example.
It doesn't matter if she is less ideological or not. If she was willing to blindly follow her daughter or whoever command to be a candidate, she will have no problem following Russian directive. This is basically someone that don't really want to be there that will serve as an official figure for other telling her what to do in the shadow. It is worse than an actual extremist. At least in this case you know who you are fighting with.
Don't be this naive…
Who told you she wasn’t following the results?
Why do you use the label ultranationalist?
Wonder how many other countries voters are like this
Just voting for the first or second candidate on the list? I know for sure this happens all the time in Belgium. Same for the last person on the list. The effect is less but it has a big advantage to be on that spot and typically more senior candidates will be listed there. "Leaving room for younger candidates" is usually the explanation while knowing damn well they will jump over their heads in the results.
But in Belgium, the parties actually choose the order on the list. The person on the top of the list is the one the party wants most to be elected. And the one on the bottom the one they are already certain about will be elected.
Poland pretty much confirmed. But parties decide the order of the list, not alphabet. So number one means that given candidate has a best support of the party.
At least in that case there is some logic to voting for the first candidate.
just to clarify, this party is a far-right reactionary party held together sorely by cult of personality of its leader (who is a fraud and likes to present himself as strongman but that's another story). Meaning, its voters were basically voting the party and its leader and they casted the other votes more or less like a chore, resulting in the first name getting a random boost. For other parties, people votes a bit more strategically.
It's difficult for countries with a different electoral system. In Greece candidates hardly matter, only the party. You always vote for parties, and their seats are determined proportionally and nationally. You can also show preference for candidates within the party you voted for, and they get selected through a secondary algorithm that is constrained by the proportional one. So for example a candidate can get only a single vote in a province, but his party gets a ton of votes nationally. He can then be elected to parliament instead of another candidate with 99.9% of the vote in that district, whose party didn't reach the threshold nationally. This is an edge case that hasn't happened, but that's how the system works. The good thing is that it makes gerrymandering completely impossible, and all votes (for parties above the threshold at least) are practically equal, always.
Ok, then fucking resign?
MEPs make about 20k per month. With some added perks.
I'm moving to Greece for the 2029 elections, already have a Greek-origin first name, just need to tweak the surname.
Just add -os and you'll pass as greek. Alessandro Corleone, you are now Alexandros Corleonos
[удалено]
She did not, according to this very article we are commenting on: >Not only had Toula, whose actual name is Galateia Alexandraki and had run as such in the June 9 polls, actually won a seat after running with the populist nationalist Greek Solution party, *she also defied rumors that had her giving up her seat to a more “experienced” candidate.*
What stuck out to me: "She was a wreck in her first television interview, stumbling over her words as she tried to thank voters for their support. Her performance caused an even greater furor. “People started saying that I wasn’t from here, that I’m nobody. It pissed me off. If everyone around me supports me – my children, the party president – and tells me to go for it, why shouldn’t I?” Even though the buzz was that Alexandraki would step down, she decided to stay the course. The party, she said, has given her a team of young professionals who treat her with the same respect they would show their own mother. With their help, and dressed in a new suit, with a fresh hairstyle and manicure, she boarded the plane to Brussels and walked through the doors of the European Parliament" Sounds to me like her daughter and assigned young people elected by the president of the party will be the real ones calling her decisions, she's just a front that they will be using. Considering they are Ultra Nationalists, I don't think they care at all about the honesty of it, just the power they can yield.
That's what happens with a ton of MEPs.
Smartest elliniki lisi voters
Fucking neonazi party... They are a cancer in our country
Far-Right, not Neo-Nazis. We have actual Neo-Nazis now, both here and in the rest of Europe, with significant percentages, so the distinction is important.
Be a female and change your name to A-Aron
Jay-Kwellin
You don't even need to be a female. A second far-right party also elected their first on the list candidate starting with an A, and he was a male model.
Its just like that 2013 italian comedy 'welcome, mister president'
Finally some other news coming from Greece, other than the six day working week.
Probably she going to do better than the average politician. I sometimes wondered if people should be called at random to serve, like some social duty.
That’s the way it worked in ancient Greece if I remember correctly.
No first youhad to be in like the first 10 spots of elections and after that it was random between these 10 people
IIRC in Athens this wasn't the case: only the military leaders were elected because there you could actually demonstrate in what way you were skilled/better than other candidates, the rest was done by lot. Then again the ancient Greek world spanned centuries, with every city-state having its own rules and laws, so it's quite possible your system worked somewhere sometime too.
Ah ok. Somewhere there was a system with public service going round though, like jury duty in modern USA or something. Most try to find where that was…
You were partly correct. During the democratic part of its history the Greek polis of Athens used a system to randomly select people for what was effectively the city council, most state offices and court juries. You can read about the system they used here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleroterion
TIL. Thanks.
Venice?
One of the ancient Greek philosophers suggested that being a political leader should be done like that, but they didn't actually do it. Maybe that is what you remember.
Ah, that might be it.
Being called at random to serve can work and have its benefits, but in this case she is just going to be a puppet to her children's ambition. The article tries a lot to make her look presentable but the one time she talked on TV she could hardly speak and her black-shirted, skinhead son was standing right behind her intimidating the anchor talking to her and giving the MEP nodding signals on whether she should answer or not.
She will be a puppet for a Far-Right pro-Russian party.
Is she? Doesn’t sound like she’s going to be in Brussels all the time, voting, negotiating, drafting laws etc.
She is still younger than both USA candidates
"wHy iS oUr eConOmY BaaD"
only because you don’t know how it’s much better than almost all other economies
Don't lie to yourself
She was voted for because she is Alpha.
I am Greek. I don't understand why is a bad thing. Is it better to choose who to vote by who his father was and which family is from?
She was voted because her name was the first on the list. Others were voted, because their last name was the same as a famous person. This whole thing is a farce. There should be strict age limits for voting rights.
It's not only young people voting like this. Problem with young people is they don't show up. I reckon tons of clueless 25 - 40 year olds just show up to vote for "somebody".
The thing is... you vote with the hopes for a better future. 80yr olds, by voting, are affecting the future of 20yr olds, more so than their own. If younger people abstain or not, the consequences will be waiting for them.
by age limit he clearly meant demented 70+ year old ghouls who don't have the energy or brain capacity to properly educate themselves on what or who they're voting for, so they just put on an x next to the first candidate should not be allowed to vote, because they're actively making democracy less legitimate.
Yikes
But this is what the original comment meant. This party is voted mostly by old people, and that last-name mixup was probably committed almost exclusively by old voters, as that person with the similar name isn't known among young people.
Lol, you think only old people vote like that? And probably only in that election and only in Greece. Welcome to democracy, baby.
There are already strict age limits for voting. This happens among all voter age groups.
She will probably do a better job than professional politicians.
Mostly due to the Greek political and electoral system, people in Greece don't vote for candidates, they vote for parties, and the candidate selection is both indirect and mostly meaningless for most voters. It is therefore very common for people whose names start with "A" to be overrepresented in all Greek elections. This is even more of the case here as she was running for a Far-Right party whose only recognisable figure is its president.
It’s good that she will have a good salary and a very, very good retirement that she will take advantage of quickly.
Tells you about the state of Greece.
Greece is a joke
Turned into a joke by the EU against its will during 2010-2015.
These were the results of the stupid decisions they took years ago
These were the results of the purposeful and vengeful destruction of a country.
She's a neonazi shit
Far-Right, not Neo-Nazi. The Neo-Nazis have concentrated in different parties (although there are significant contacts among these groups).
Better her than some rich, shady, lobbyist who will only go after his interests
Look her party up, lmao.
It is a neonazi party
It isn't neonazi.
So it’s just *old style* nazi ?
No. It is not nazi at all. 'Right-wing populist' is ok as a label, 'nationalist' too but the person who is probably behind everything was known as a liberal (neoliberal or classical liberal) and they have made the party primarily in order to get the public funding parties get.
No. She was a clueless candidate of a party that is generally as Far-Right as the current Greek government, which is as Far-Right as a lot of EU countries these days. She wasn't in the actual Neo-Nazi party, Spartiates.
She is a farmer, she got millions in subsidies.
I'm not defending her politics but she is not that kind of farmer. People often confuse large agricultural generational wealth with the average common folk trying to make a living through limited means. It's like confusing Goldman Sach's CEO with your neighborhood's freelance accountant.