German Pirate Party Scores Second State Victory • Hacker News Board

Re: German Pirate Party Scores Second State Victory

#41

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Mar 26, 2012, 5:09 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #30

davidw wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One serious flaw of the proportional system, like Italy and Israel both have, is that a small party can be the deciding vote, and have a much larger weight than it merits. For instance: center-left party gets 48% of the vote, communists (they still exist here) get 4% of the vote. To form a majority, the large party must strike a deal with the small party, which can dictate conditions... This happens regularly in Ital…

> For instance: center-left party gets 48% of the vote, communists (they still exist here) get 4% of the vote. To form a majority, the large party must strike a deal with the small party, which can dictate conditions... Or they simply look for someone on the other side. E.g. in Germany, SPD (social democrats) routinely ignore Left (socialists and communists) and instead deals with the conservative CDU. It's not like…

[deleted]

Re: German Pirate Party Scores Second State Victory

#42

Post by yxhuvud » Mon, Mar 26, 2012, 5:12 PM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #12

icebraining wrote: post #6

Copyright discussions played little role in the Pirate's successful campaign, however. The party instead focused on issues of social and political reform. Has anyone with real political influence (so, not them for now ;) addresses this issue? I suppose this was relevant before, but with more targeted parties like the Pirates, I think the faults in our election system seem more pronounced. The reality is that a party…

Copyright et al. is just the most well-known program point they. AFAIK the movement started in scandinavia (sweden?) as response to some Pirate Bay issues I forgot about after all the SOPA, ACTA Megaupload stories. Already sorry for being to lacy to look it up right now.

Actually, it was started a few months before the police raid on the Pirate Bay raid. Membership exploded at that point though.

Re: German Pirate Party Scores Second State Victory

#43

Post by drucken » Mon, Mar 26, 2012, 5:13 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #30

davidw wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One serious flaw of the proportional system, like Italy and Israel both have, is that a small party can be the deciding vote, and have a much larger weight than it merits. For instance: center-left party gets 48% of the vote, communists (they still exist here) get 4% of the vote. To form a majority, the large party must strike a deal with the small party, which can dictate conditions... This happens regularly in Ital…

> For instance: center-left party gets 48% of the vote, communists (they still exist here) get 4% of the vote. To form a majority, the large party must strike a deal with the small party, which can dictate conditions... Or they simply look for someone on the other side. E.g. in Germany, SPD (social democrats) routinely ignore Left (socialists and communists) and instead deals with the conservative CDU. It's not like…

I agree with you regarding the former.

However, the latter to me is just plain insanity. It is a serious flaw in that it is the opposite of WYSIWYG but applied to the most critical of institutions that forms the foundation of your society.

In addition, there is likely a high level lack of transparency and consistency because parties can internally organise themselves however they like and change it whenever and how often they like. Information and transparency changes are always slow to propagate in social systems, especially in time for the next elections. To argue voters should be better informed and act accordingly is ... systemically optimistic, to say the least. There is also the huge opportunity cost of going independent or forming another party.

So, this is, like the OP said, effectively handing over a huge amount of democratic power into a few controlling hands.

For example, even if someone left the political party or were never part of it but simply a powerful patron, they could still retain enormous control over a political party. Do you really want a George Bush, Tony Blair, Berlusconi or some economic magnate or ideologue controlling representation and policy from "political retirement", for example? :)

Re: German Pirate Party Scores Second State Victory

#44

Post by philippK » Mon, Mar 26, 2012, 6:09 PM UTC

I'm from Saarland (the state where the vote was last night), and i voted for the pirate party last night.

They are not an anti copyright group. It's true that they want to see modifications made to overly strict copyright laws and oppose treaties like ACTA, data retention laws, web censorship laws (all of which have been proposed in germany in the last years).

Their core demands are: * Improve overly strict copyright laws * Improve transparency of government (open data, foia , etc) * Improve the educational system to take advantage of the internet and other "new media" in class. * Improve citizen participation in government by having public votes on more issues

They are also about the only party that has some competence when it comes to computers, the internet, etc

So, as a web-centric citizen, it was easy for me to vote for them.

Re: German Pirate Party Scores Second State Victory

#45

Post by brazzy » Mon, Mar 26, 2012, 6:58 PM UTC

drucken wrote: post #43

vidarh wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For instance: center-left party gets 48% of the vote, communists (they still exist here) get 4% of the vote. To form a majority, the large party must strike a deal with the small party, which can dictate conditions... Or they simply look for someone on the other side. E.g. in Germany, SPD (social democrats) routinely ignore Left (socialists and communists) and instead deals with the conservative CDU. It's not like…

I agree with you regarding the former. However, the latter to me is just plain insanity. It is a serious flaw in that it is the opposite of WYSIWYG but applied to the most critical of institutions that forms the foundation of your society. In addition, there is likely a high level lack of transparency and consistency because parties can internally organise themselves however they like and change it whenever and how o…

Note that Germany (as well as New Zealand and Scotland) actually has a mixed system for the Bundestag (lower, more important chamber of parliament) where roughly half the seats are determined by a district-based first past the post system and the others by a proportional system, with each voter having two votes.

The downside is that you need really complex rules to reconcile cases where the two results don't match up. This is done by adding extra seats, but can lead to edge cases where a party would actually have gotten more seats if it had recieved fewer votes.

Re: German Pirate Party Scores Second State Victory

#46

Post by hef19898 » Mon, Mar 26, 2012, 7:05 PM UTC

mhd wrote: post #26

hef19898 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I meant. Apparently, the old is the new fresh, or something like that. :-) What I expect from them is representation of civil rights and personal freedom in society. And you don't even have to be part of the government to do that in Germany. Just one question, you are from Germany, aren't you?

Yup (well, Bavaria, which technically does count). But while I do hope that the Pirates emerge as a new center for social liberalism, which was pretty much dismantled in the early '80s when the FDP turned towards a new wind, I'm a bit worried whether that's achievable. I would love to be wrong, but I can't see a coherent picture emerging from that much grassroots democracy.

Me too, the Bavaria part, and yes, we only technically count ;-). The only hope i have in the long run for the pirates, or whatever name the movement adopts one day, is that they are not going the way of any new party and turn the new greens eventually.

Re: German Pirate Party Scores Second State Victory

#47

Post by brazzy » Mon, Mar 26, 2012, 7:08 PM UTC

maytsch wrote: post #38

davidw wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One serious flaw of the proportional system, like Italy and Israel both have, is that a small party can be the deciding vote, and have a much larger weight than it merits. For instance: center-left party gets 48% of the vote, communists (they still exist here) get 4% of the vote. To form a majority, the large party must strike a deal with the small party, which can dictate conditions... This happens regularly in Ital…

This isn't really a problem of the proportional system - given a large party narrowly over 50%, relatively small interest groups within the party will start gaining extraordinary weight as well. Just think of the tea party. In my opinion, the upside of splitting the parties up is that it makes these particular power struggle more visible, and allows parties more flexibility in ignoring interest groups when a majority…

An even more extreme example is Japan: the LDP was in power from 1955 to 2009 (except for two years in 1993-1994), with the result that actual policy decisions (as well as who go the highest political offices) were negotiated between factions within that party.

Re: German Pirate Party Scores Second State Victory

#48

Post by cabalamat » Mon, Mar 26, 2012, 7:33 PM UTC

jellicle wrote: post #8

For the political hackers: note that these victories are made possible by Germany's proportional representation system, which guarantees seats in parliaments to any party which gets more than 5% of the popular vote across the state/city/whatever. Thus parties with broad but shallow support do get represented in government. The electoral systems in the UK-derived nations (geographic districts only, first past the post…

> The electoral systems in the UK-derived nations (geographic districts only, first past the post) expressly prohibit such broad-but-shallow movements from ever being represented in government.

This is true for the Westminster parliament. It is not true for other elected bodies in the UK, which use the following electoral systems, and with the approximate share of the vote you need to get elected:

   London Assembly, MMP (as Germany), 5%
   Scottish Parliament, MMP, c. 6%
   Welsh Assembly, MMP, c. 8%
   Northern Ireland assembly, 6 member STV, c. 10%
   NI local government, 6 member STV, c. 10%
   Scottish local government, 3-4 member STV, c. 13%
   European parliament, 
      1 STV constituency and 11 closed lists,
      varies between c. 8% and 17%

Incidentally, I am a Pirate Party UK candidate standing in Edinburgh this May -- http://edinburgh.pirateparty.org.uk/

Re: German Pirate Party Scores Second State Victory

#49

Post by cabalamat » Mon, Mar 26, 2012, 7:50 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #20

hef19898 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which electoral system is better is another discussion. Both have their flaws, but a pretty good discription of how elections work in Germany.

One serious flaw of the proportional system, like Italy and Israel both have, is that a small party can be the deciding vote, and have a much larger weight than it merits. For instance: center-left party gets 48% of the vote, communists (they still exist here) get 4% of the vote. To form a majority, the large party must strike a deal with the small party, which can dictate conditions... This happens regularly in Ital…

> One serious flaw of the proportional system

No such thing. There are lots of proportional systems, each of which have different proporties.

> like Italy and Israel both have

what you say is explicitly not true in Italy, where the biggest party/coalition is automatically given enough top-up seats to give them a majority.

> is that a small party can be the deciding vote, and have a much larger weight than it merits. For instance: center-left party gets 48% of the vote, communists (they still exist here) get 4% of the vote.

If the seats were split 48-48-4, then the party wih four seats would have as much power as the other two, since any two parties form a majority. But under PR, legislatures typically aren't split between two big parties and a small one. In Israel, for example, the largest party got 28 of 120 seats.

> Another flaw is that, in Italy at least, since it is not the voters of a given district who decide on one of several candidates, it is the political party who decides who actually gets to be on the list of people sent to parliament.

This is the same as with FPTP: the party decides on the candidate, and if it's asafe seat, that candidate is virtually certain to be elected. There are several systems of PR where voters not parties decide which of a party's candidates are elected: STV and open lists, for example.

Re: German Pirate Party Scores Second State Victory

#50

Post by mhd » Mon, Mar 26, 2012, 8:07 PM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #46

mhd wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup (well, Bavaria, which technically does count). But while I do hope that the Pirates emerge as a new center for social liberalism, which was pretty much dismantled in the early '80s when the FDP turned towards a new wind, I'm a bit worried whether that's achievable. I would love to be wrong, but I can't see a coherent picture emerging from that much grassroots democracy.

Me too, the Bavaria part, and yes, we only technically count ;-). The only hope i have in the long run for the pirates, or whatever name the movement adopts one day, is that they are not going the way of any new party and turn the new greens eventually.

Considering that the biggest problem the Greens have right now is that basically every other party is pretty keen on environmental issues, too, and so they've become somewhat superfluous, I wouldn't mind the same happening to the pirates ;)