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finnish democracy
27 Oct 2008 10:26 pmActually, Finland is socialist, but whatever.
Yesterday Wax and I voted in the municipal elections. My first time, because... I guess it's my now being on social security that did it. I'm not eligible to vote in the national elections still, only the local ones.
Finland has a great deal of political parties, so there's more work involved: huge posters with the hundreds of candidate names organised in big blocks by party outside the door. We both wanted to vote Green and we scanned the list for female and Swedish-speaking names. Wax picked a Mikaela Sundqvist, obviously of Swedish-speaking descent and possibly an acquaintance ("I might know her. Her name sounds familiar. And she's in biochemistry") and I picked a middle-eastern looking name because I dig the immigrant-working-as-translator thing. So then we showed our ballot forms that we got in the mail and they gave us this tiny piece of paper, more like the kind of thing you'd use to vote for the homecoming queen. It's about the size of a Thank-You note, with a seal on the outside and on the inside, just a big empty white circle a few inches in diameter that says "No.:" inside it.
I turned it backwards and forwards and looked everywhere for some instructions. The lack of instructions was distressing. But finally I figured I was just meant to write the candidate's number in the circle. That seemed a little too simple so I did a nice serif lettering, sort of large, and shaded the numbers in. And that was it. I asked on the way out to make sure I did it right, and Wax says I did. So now I have contributed to two elections this month (since I mailed the absentee ballot for Alabama a few weeks ago).
Oh! And both my candidate and Wax's got elected. The Greens gained two seats on the city council. SDP (social democrats) lost two of those and Center (right wing bastards) lost the other! The Coalition party - the Republicans of Finland, kind of, except there aren't any really, so they're more like Democrats actually - are in charge overall though.
Yesterday Wax and I voted in the municipal elections. My first time, because... I guess it's my now being on social security that did it. I'm not eligible to vote in the national elections still, only the local ones.
Finland has a great deal of political parties, so there's more work involved: huge posters with the hundreds of candidate names organised in big blocks by party outside the door. We both wanted to vote Green and we scanned the list for female and Swedish-speaking names. Wax picked a Mikaela Sundqvist, obviously of Swedish-speaking descent and possibly an acquaintance ("I might know her. Her name sounds familiar. And she's in biochemistry") and I picked a middle-eastern looking name because I dig the immigrant-working-as-translator thing. So then we showed our ballot forms that we got in the mail and they gave us this tiny piece of paper, more like the kind of thing you'd use to vote for the homecoming queen. It's about the size of a Thank-You note, with a seal on the outside and on the inside, just a big empty white circle a few inches in diameter that says "No.:" inside it.
I turned it backwards and forwards and looked everywhere for some instructions. The lack of instructions was distressing. But finally I figured I was just meant to write the candidate's number in the circle. That seemed a little too simple so I did a nice serif lettering, sort of large, and shaded the numbers in. And that was it. I asked on the way out to make sure I did it right, and Wax says I did. So now I have contributed to two elections this month (since I mailed the absentee ballot for Alabama a few weeks ago).
Oh! And both my candidate and Wax's got elected. The Greens gained two seats on the city council. SDP (social democrats) lost two of those and Center (right wing bastards) lost the other! The Coalition party - the Republicans of Finland, kind of, except there aren't any really, so they're more like Democrats actually - are in charge overall though.
