The German federal constitutional court has ruled -again- that the federal election law is unconstitutional. It's distorting elections substantially. The court ordered the politicians to create a new law that meets certain requirements prior to the next federal elections in a year.
 |
| The German Bundestag, our most important parliament |
This is actually the second ruling of this kind, there was already one in 2008 with an ultimatums panning three years. The current governing coalition (conservatives + so-called liberals) had passed a new elections law in response to that ultimatum, and it was again so horrible that everyone not really stupid could see it. Guess who was the beneficiary of the horrible parts. Seriously, I can create a much better elections law from scratch and make it resilient to charges from mathematicians in a single afternoon. The fuck-up has its roots either in evil intent or in incompetence.
The really astonishing thing to me is the complacency of the media about this. They report about it as if it was some kind of shipyard subsidy law, not about the core of our democracy.
Let's look at it in detail: Three plus one year - that's four years of living with an officially fucked up elections law. Every federal election held with this law in force can be considered to be badly distorted - election fraud top-down.
Now guess who's supposed to fix it? Yeah, exactly the same ones who already fucked the latest version officially up. Moreover, these people came to power with help from the earlier officially fucked up version of the elections law.
This is almost as if a royal dynasty was interrupted by a bastard and the commenters ignore it as if it meant no real harm to the legitimacy of the whole.
I believe our press should adopt some higher expectations when it comes to our democracy. It's not enough to hit the extremists from both sides repeatedly while the people in power fuck up our democracy with a rotten boroughs-( edit: gerrymandering-) like attitude.
S Ortmann
edit 2012-11: I mixed up rotten boroughs and gerrymandering. Fixed.
.
Maybe they should pass a constitutional law the no elections law make take effect until after the next election and/or it has been found legal by the court.
ReplyDeleteTim
"This is blog about the defence against external threats and about the defence of civil liberties. Most topics are about the art of war, military history or military technology." - top os the blog
ReplyDeleteWhile pondering the other post "I'm wondering..." (so far I got nothing yet), but since we often deal with defence and things like units, weapons, etc..., how come we never afaik really get into making a constitution? There are post like this one, but it tends to be about what is wrong and not how to make a better government. A well ordered constitution helps protect civil liberties as much as a well ordered military. If either the military or the government is lacking the efforts of one can be lost by the failure of the other.
Tim
I don't get what you mean by "making a constitution". Germany has one.
ReplyDeleteMaybe you think of something like this?
http://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.de/2011/03/draft-for-new-german-security-policy.html
I know Germany has one (I've actually read the English versions of Italy's, Spain's, Denmark's, and others), yes like that link, but not just policy, but a constituion. You have posts on things like "Challenging the IFV concept - Part 1", but why not on think out of the box on constitutions. Challenge the conventional wisdom; Presidential system, Semi-presidential system, Parliamentary system, Direct democracy, Representative democracy, etc... what is the best (or a at lest a better) way to go in the constituional aspect like the post on what is the best way to go in regards to the military.
ReplyDeleteTim
I actually have some stuff in my brain about how elections outcomes could be made to match voter's intent better by a different parliamentary system.
ReplyDeleteThis was not meant to be a political science blog, though.
I'm already stretching readers' interest into the civil liberties area away from guns&stuff. Other blogs manage to combine two topics as well 8such as military & wargaming on Grognews, but a decent coverage of three is rather rare.
My infrequent excursions into macroeconomics are already quite a deviation from my two topics.
Was just hoping every now and then (many months apart even) you might bring it up. I know guns, planes, tanks, and so on are cool and awesome to see, and constitutions are not as cool and awesome.
ReplyDeleteTim
The constitution is the legal basis for using these weapons and the circumstances under which you build or acquire them. If constitution doesn't matter, it neither matters for what causes weapons are used and under what circumstances.
ReplyDeleteOur journalism is detoriating in quality and most don't grasp the implications. From many current journalists' perspective it's more about an irrelevant change who invites them to a free lunch while they have to feed recycled entertainment with the right spin. No wonder because the tabloids are the best paying employers of journalists, so we, the people and readers, are as much at fault.
I would be cautious about any solution that subjects the will of lawmakers to the ruling of a supreme court, because typically the supreme court is by far the less democratically anchored body. I know that it's easy to turn to a supreme court and ask it to stop legislation that one doesn't like, but the idea is that you don't elect people that make stupid legislation. Once you did that you have to eat the shit they give you or demand a new election, expecting to be saved by a supreme court works just as long as it takes for the supreme court to switch sides (and that's not long, unless the supreme court is on the other corrupt side already)
ReplyDeleteI believe we all need to wake up and smell the crap. Everything our government does is all a huge fraud. The constitution states that we are to have no writs, notes of debt, or anything other than silver or gold as payments of debt. The UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (notice the all caps used on every legal document) is nothing more than a mere corporation. The BAR association, court houses, police departments, etc.. all have EIN numbers (employer identification number). In knowing this, one can prove that none of these corporations hold any form of jurisdiction over us. These entities were put there by us, and they should be working for US. They will call you a "resident," or "subject" to hold you accountable to their rules and regulations. We, natural born domiciles of this great land, are considered, by all rights and definitions, to be Native American. As we all know, being Native American, are tax exempt, and hold no form of mortgage, property tax, state tax, federal tax etc.. There is much more on these subjects. Hit me up if interested in learning more. We need to flourish again, and make our country free
ReplyDeleteCJ Lang, "we" and "our" are inappropriate words for your comment on a blog post about GERMAN election laws.
Delete