None of these

I finally opened my mail-in ballot for the upcoming Austrian national election today and actually had a laugh-out-loud moment when I finished fully unfolding it. You see, the final of the eleven options states: "Keine von denen - KEINE", which means "none of these - NONE", so my first thought was: Wait, did they add an "official" way to spoil your ballot if you want to take part in the democratic process but don't like any of the available choices?

But no, it's an actual political party. Their whole thing is that they do say they don't feel represented by any of the current parties, so I guess their mission statement is in the name... but it does seem like a bit of a legal loophole and like they could potentially get a good chunk of votes simply out of confusion. Very Austrian, is all I'll say.

Comments

  1. Wilhelm Arcturus16 September 2024 at 17:32

    That has "cunning plan" all over it. I am surprised it was allowed. No doubt it got in through rules lawyerin on the order of "there is no rule that says out party CAN'T be named this!"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Shintar16 September 2024 at 19:13

      I did a bit of googling to see whether there was any discourse about this at all, but only found a single newspaper editorial that seemed to think it was a stupid move and implied that the official body responsible for this kind of thing had signed it all off. Curious to see what comes of it, though I'm not too worried (as I suspect that most people who bother to go vote do have someone in mind they want to vote for).

      Also, congratulations on being the first commenter on this blog!

      Delete
  2. Pallais17 September 2024 at 10:01

    This is the sort of thing that would be fun to see on all ballots. A protest vote that might actually get somewhere. ^_^

    ReplyDelete

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