[pp.int.general] European Elections

[Mårten Fjällström]

On Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:27:40 +0200, Andrew Norton  
<andrew.norton at pirate-party.us> wrote:

> 9 months to the election, give or take. We need to make sure we're all
> working together, I'd like, if possible, for all parties to tell me if
> they're getting involved in the EU election or not. We have to know if
> we even ahve enough countries participating to make our own group.
>
> If you are, we need to start collecting together info, and working
> together. So, the status you're at, if you're collecting signatures for
> qualification (how many you have, how many you need, and by when) do you
> have candidates, and maybe what issues you think we can target in your
> country.
>
> What am I saying, you're all smart, you get the idea :-)
>
> just the yays and nays for now, and we'll work from there.

That would be a yay from Sweden. We are right now in the end of process of  
deciding how we decide the ballots. We are aiming at deciding the ballots  
before the end of the year, which is well before the official deadline in  
Sweden (13th of Mars).

Sweden has a proportional system of alloting the seats, and a 4% threshold  
before you get any seat. With 19 seats, the current number of parties and  
the algoritm for seat distribution this yields one seat when you pass 4%  
and after that about one at 10%, one at 15%, but it really matters how the  
distribution is among other parties. With the current participation rate  
in the EP elections we would need about 100 k votes to pass the threshold.  
We got 35 k in 2006 and a similar amount in the school mock election. If  
we can mobilise those and 30 k more we are in. So we have a realistic aim  
of one seat. As to gaining those votes, we are pretty much following the  
votes strategy from the Uppsala Declaration, quoted below for your  
convenience.

In general, the rules are national and though the election is pan-EU at  
least here the election is mostly national.

Regards,
Mårten Fjällström
Party Secretary
Piratpartiet

"Votes Strategy

It is the collective consensus of the gathered European Leaders that with  
the scarce resources of a new founded contender party, those resources  
must be focused on a well identified front bowling pin. Statistical data  
states that election participation has been on a continual down slope for  
the past decade and a half for first-time voters, while at the same time,  
the core support for our issues are in the 18-30 age range. This data is  
supported by membership demographics.

Therefore, the identified key catalyst target group is university  
students. Previous experience from elections where Pirate Parties have  
participated show that we are unusually strong at technical universities;  
up to ten times the national average. We need to broaden this scope to all  
universities. Universities are ideal in that they are a concentrated  
recruiting ground with people who are generally passionate about what they  
take part in.

Using Sweden as a template for numbers, assuming that these numbers are  
similar across other European countries with Pirate Parties, there are  
300k university students. 100k votes are needed to get into the European  
Parliament. This means that we would need 33% of the votes of the  
university students, which is not a realistic number. Therefore, we must  
regard universities all across Europe as a recruiting ground for activists  
and ambassadors, who recruit voters in their turn. For example, there are  
another 125k 18-year-olds not yet in university, but who usually have  
friends there. There are friends, relatives, and social circles.

In other words, the key is to supply political passion about the issues to  
young people who would otherwise typically not vote at all, and encourage  
them to become recruiting ambassadors in their turn. There is no  
identified difference here between different political issues of ours.

To accomplish this, we need to supply these ambassadors with confidence,  
rhetoric and, where possible, political material to distribute in turn.  
This is a logistical challenge that needs to be met by each individual  
European Pirate Party."