41,000 signatures pooh pooh
Barbara Barsma. Known from the CO2 budget. Known from gratuitous fact-free opinions about the mob. Known from ManufacturerNL. Known from very quickly away from HerstelNL. Known from not wanting to be held accountable for wanting to leave HerstelNL very quickly. And known for the New Deal. That Barbara Baarsma. With “her” initiative (together with all the other sad horns including Jan-Jaap “DWDD Needed Me” van der Wal) collected 41,000 signatures on the internet and now thinks she is absolutely right that there should be an electoral threshold. The following sentences are really in ‘quality newspaper’ NRC.
“The petition also seems to contradict the assumptions of the State Commission on another point. Remkes et al. refer to previous research with doubts about the importance of fragmentation: “It has been noted that: (a) citizens consider this a real problem and (b) at the same time, the question is whether that is really the case, in the sense that the number of parliamentary factions over the years does not increase so much, but rather fluctuates.” In addition, the committee continues, “an ambivalence was found among many citizens on this point: people attach great importance to proportional representation with a low electoral threshold, which means that new groups can gain a seat in the House of Representatives relatively easily”.
The speed with which the petition – even without a sophisticated PR campaign (attention in eg AD, Telegraph, Fidelitysupport from Jan-Jaap van der Wal, Huub Stapel and the Brabants Dagblad column by Tony van der MeulenGS) – came into circulation and was signed, leaves little room for ambivalence. Many citizens believe that the electoral threshold should be raised. “
Little ambivalence? If 41,000 online signatures leave “little room for ambivalence”, then we should stop 5G immediately (52,424 signatureswithout a sophisticated PR campaign), reduce the retirement age to 65 (113,933 signatureswithout a sophisticated PR campaign) and abolish daylight saving time (66,467 signatures, without a sophisticated PR campaign). If all citizens hate those little splinter parties so much, then they can just STOP VOTING FOR SPLINT PARTIES. But yeah. Then you need large political groupings that represent large sections of the population. Maybe that’s the problem.
