Jacob Christensen

In case you haven’t already added Kai Arzheimer’s blog to your feed-reader, check out his attempts at playing a couple of voting aids for the European Parliament election.

And this was where I landed on votematch.eu:

The thing is: There is a referendum on an amendment to the Act of Succession attached to the European Parliament election, but the really big question is if the amendment will make it or if the entire Danish political elite will be standing with egg on their faces on Sunday night next week.

The short story is this: Back in 1915 (!), the Liberal leader J.C. Christensen wanted to block possible later attempts by the Social Liberals and Social Democrats to introduce a more radical constitution so as a conservative guarantee he had a provision that any later changes to the Danish constitution had to be passed by to consecutive parliaments and a referendum where 45% of all eligible voters voted in favour of the new constitution.

In 1920, the reunification with Sønderjylland meant that the consitution had to be amended slightly, but despite the overwhelming support for the reunification, only 47,5% of all voters voted in favour of the amendment while 1,5% voted against. It was a close shave.

In 1939, Christensen got his revenge (even if he had been dead for 9 years by then) when a proposal supported by the Social Democrats, the Social Liberals and the Conservatives was narrowly defeated as only 44,5% voted yes and 3,9% no. Interestingly, the 1953 constitutional reform was more controversial: 45,8% yes-votes against 12,3% no-votes. One important part of the 1953 constitution was a lowering of the threshold to 40%, another the introduction of article 20.2 which opens for referendums on the transfer of sovereignty to international organs following the normal rules for referendums (30% no-votes needed to block a proposal)

As we all know, Danish governments have won two and lost two article 20.2 referendums since 1953¹, lost four and won one under article 42 and won three and lost one under article 29 (voting age, in case you wonder), but we haven’t had a constitutional referendum for 56 years. In short: Nobody knows how the Act of Succession will fare even if 86% of voters say they are in favour of introducing full primogeniture. However, with an expected turn-out hovering around 48% – and given the extremely lacklustre campaign a lower turn-out shouldn’t be ruled out – we are now really close to the 40%.

The Prime Minister’s Office has launched a campaign promoting the amendment to the Act of Succession – which in itself is interesting and constutitionally questionable – and placed advertisements to be shown in DR TV’s OBS-slots (usually at 1 am Sunday night) – which might be even more questionable. And Billed-Bladet, the self-declared “Royal Magazine of Denmark”? Not a word.

PS: You want fact-sheets on Danish referendums? Here goes.

1. The 1993 referendum was under article 42 [↩]

Barack Obama mentions Denmark in a speech! For the second time in little over a month!!

The design of the Social Liberals puzzles me: The thing is that both the font and the colours look like something which was modern in the 1960s. Perhaps the SLs are hoping for another 1968?

I still haven’t managed to catch the one with Poul Nyrup Rasmussen endorsing Dan Jørgensen with a camera but I did come across a bunch of Bendt Bendtsens a couple of days ago. Riding a bike and taking photos at the same time is generally not a good idea, though.

Fellow blogger Jarl Cordua discusses the campaign in a post (Danish) on K-Forum. That’s where all the communications experts hang out, in case you wonder.

In case you wonder: Donatello.

Thanks to Rocketboom and Peter Santesson-Wilson for combined inspiration.

And to xkcd for the cartoon.

More here.

Inspired by Robert Scoble, I’ve put a Google Friend Connect widget in the sidebar. I’m not quite sure what good it does, except promote the sad lonely existence of this blog. Or perhaps allow you to promote yourself if you have a Google account. And you do, because let’s face it: The big G is everywhere these days.

Considering that California could claim its own seat at the G20 if it was counted as a country – and let’s face it: Given the choice between Berlusconi and Schwarzenegger, who would you prefer? – reporting on the recent financial problems of the state and failed attempts to find solutions has been almost non-existent in this part of the world. Governor Schwarzenegger might want the powers of the Terminator or some other super-hero – or maybe he, in a strange twist of the tale, has become a Terminator victim?

Anyway, Louis Warren has a guest post at Edge of the American West, explaining some of the causes for the rot.

Basic political science question: The majority rule has its own problems compared to the supermajority rule, but if you have an extremist minority is the destruction of the polity or overruling the minority the best option.

PS: I know that there has been a lot of development in voting models and mathematical treatments of voting systems, but I still find Robert A. Dahl’s 1956 book A Preface to Democratic Theory as thought-provoking as anything I’ve read.

In the old days, they would withdraw the whip from you (okay, in the really old days they’d chop off your head), but these days they shut down your blog.

The combination of lorries and – well – other traffic is often problematic, not just in Denmark where cyclists are squashed like bugs on a regular basis:

The man appearing from behind the lorry after the crash is London mayor Boris Johnson who apparently was almost hit by the car caught by the lorry. (Guardian report, blog post by London assembly member James Cleverly, flickr photos by – as they say – a member of the public)