Last Sunday were Austrian national elections. Democracy prevailed and the current, quite unpopular government was voted out of office.
Sadly, people instead voted the right-wing FPOE to the top of the list with almost 29% of the votes. So far, that doesn’t mean they were voted into the government, but it will definitely be most difficult to get a new government. I’m not expecting anything anytime soon.
I sent in my absentee vote almost three weeks ago, and I really hope it did arrive in time (you never know…). The ballot paper I received cracked me up, have a look at the last position:
“Keine” means “none”, with the full party name translating to “none of those” (other parties.) That’s hilarious, and at the same time: why can’t we not really vote for “none of those” and just leave the seats won like that empty in the parliament?
I know that many people don’t vote or vote right-wing just to piss off the mostly center-left establishment. In my not so humble opinion: there are plenty of other parties to vote for if you’d really like to teach lessons. Hell, this time, we even had a “Beer Party” (not making this up, the candidate was actually quite interesting) on the ballot.
So, maybe this would be a valid option for those who’d rather not be stuck between a rock and a hard place. Just have a “empty” vote that would lead to empty seats and let the chips fall where they may.
Of course, the question is whether in the end the result would look the same after all, just with scaled down percentages. Then again, I always wonder what kind of work our parliamentarians are doing, really…
Maybe it’s worth a try. I mean, with all the online polls everywhere it would be easy to have such a system and see how many people are really supporting a party’s line versus how many see it as the best worst option.