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Post by arjan on Nov 22, 2006 4:27:37 GMT -5
Election Day in Holland today.
All 150 members of the 'Second Chamber', what in the US and Uk is called 'House of Representatives' and 'House of Commons' are being elected.
Each voter has the choice of 24 parties, and they have nominies from 10 to 70. So each voter votes one person, this vote goes to the party first and the person second. For each party, the people on the list from 1 to how many they score come into the Chambre, unless someone lower has enough votes to get in, replacing the lowest one with not enough personal votes.
Of the 24 parties, there's now 8 with actual people in the Chamber, varying from 42 to 2 people belong to a party. After the election, a coaliton is tried to be formed between 2 or more parties who together must have at least 76 seats (to be able to not be outvoted on every decission by the opposition).
It's exciting this time, as votes seem to differ a lot and it will be hard to form any coalition between parties with enough similarities. The big question of course is: will Balkenende's conservative party be #1 again, resulting in Balkenende staying prime-minister, or will it be the dutch Labour party of mr. Bos, or maybe the Socialists will surprise anyone and get even more seats than predicted in the polls?
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Post by bluesron on Nov 22, 2006 5:56:37 GMT -5
Good lord.
I'd hate to think what would happen to our election/voting system over here if we had to vote like that. We make enough of a mess with just two major parties and a couple of smaller independents.
We'd never get anyone in government as we'd be too busy recounting all the votes. lol
Ron
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Post by Antonio on Nov 22, 2006 8:31:04 GMT -5
Good luck to the Dutch friends. It's amazing though how many parties you have in such a little country. Even Italy would almost look like the USA, in comparison.
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Post by jhar26 on Nov 22, 2006 14:11:16 GMT -5
Let's hope that Balkenende doesn't profit from the split vote on the left (PVDA & SP). Gaston Election Day in Holland today. All 150 members of the 'Second Chamber', what in the US and Uk is called 'House of Representatives' and 'House of Commons' are being elected. Each voter has the choice of 24 parties, and they have nominies from 10 to 70. So each voter votes one person, this vote goes to the party first and the person second. For each party, the people on the list from 1 to how many they score come into the Chambre, unless someone lower has enough votes to get in, replacing the lowest one with not enough personal votes. Of the 24 parties, there's now 8 with actual people in the Chamber, varying from 42 to 2 people belong to a party. After the election, a coaliton is tried to be formed between 2 or more parties who together must have at least 76 seats (to be able to not be outvoted on every decission by the opposition). It's exciting this time, as votes seem to differ a lot and it will be hard to form any coalition between parties with enough similarities. The big question of course is: will Balkenende's conservative party be #1 again, resulting in Balkenende staying prime-minister, or will it be the dutch Labour party of mr. Bos, or maybe the Socialists will surprise anyone and get even more seats than predicted in the polls? |
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Post by Andrew on Nov 23, 2006 10:09:37 GMT -5
I was looking at how one becomes a Dutch citizen, and it looks like it's getting quite difficult, thanks to politics. (I've looked at the gay marriage countries--Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, and Canada, for obvious reasons....not that I could easily leave my family behind, but I was fantasizing about getting the hell out of dodge...)
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Post by bluesron on Nov 23, 2006 10:30:05 GMT -5
I was looking at how one becomes a Dutch citizen, and it looks like it's getting quite difficult, thanks to politics. (I've looked at the gay marriage countries--Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, and Canada, for obvious reasons....not that I could easily leave my family behind, but I was fantasizing about getting the hell out of dodge...) Really? not being able to get married seems like a minor reason to leave one's birth country IMO. I don't have anything against being an ex-pat (I'd have loved to been one in Europe during the period between the World Wars, too much Hemingway I guess lol). I guess I don't know first hand what gays and lesbians go thru so probably should just shut my mouth. But things are mostly better than they were a generation ago, despite the whole marriage thing. Ron |
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Post by arjan on Nov 23, 2006 14:17:59 GMT -5
Well, the results are in... and it will be interesting the next weeks or months.
CDA 41 (-3)
(conservatives of prime minister Balkenende)
PvdA 32 (-10)
(labour)
VVD 22 (-6)
(liberals)
SP 26 (+17)
(socialists)
GroenLinks 7 (-1)
(green)
D66 3 (-3)
(democrat-liberal)
CU 6 (+3)
(christian social)
SGP 2 (-)
(biblical)
PvdD 2 (+2)
(party for the animals)
PvdV 9 (+9)
(party of freedom, aka anti-islam)
As you can see, not 2 parties have more than 75 seats. Of course it's also messy that the Socialists, not good friends of either Conservatives or Rightwingers PvdV, won a lot and deserve a chance to see what they can. But who wants to reign with them? Labour, but there's no way the left-focus party's can have 76 seats, not even in an unworkable 6 party coalition.
The best guess for now is CDA, PvdA and CU, which will be a christian-socialist coalition. But how they can work together, I don't know... time will tell.
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Post by Andrew on Nov 27, 2006 11:13:25 GMT -5
[quote author=bluesron board=democrat thread=1164187657 post=1164295805
Really? not being able to get married seems like a minor reason to leave one's birth country IMO.
I don't have anything against being an ex-pat (I'd have loved to been one in Europe during the period between the World Wars, too much Hemingway I guess lol).
I guess I don't know first hand what gays and lesbians go thru so probably should just shut my mouth. But things are mostly better than they were a generation ago, despite the whole marriage thing.
Ron[/quote]
No, you're right, things have gotten much better, but at the same time this country is getting scary. It's not a super-serious thought on my part...mostly I was allowing myself a bit of daydreaming websurfing. With regards to the climate, however, a country that continues to drift towards "separate but equal" has obviously learned nothing from the civil rights movement of the sixties. It may be more couched in "love the sinner" language, but "separate but equal" is still acceptable here, even though it is unconstitutional by precendent and by everything that is supposedly American.
I'm not even in a relationship, so the marriage thing does not affect me in that sense, but the climate does.
Andrew
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