|
Hello again old friends. The entire Polish Electoral Committee resigned tonight effective immediately following the results of the second round of local elections (Nov 30 if all goes as planned which it won't). This whole thing has been an absolute catastrophe. In addition to the aforementioned computer program written by a 19 year old the government apparently did a very poor job explaining how the new electoral booklet system works leading to the invalidation of up to 27% of votes in some regions. While there is no legal provision for invalidating the election and calling a new one something like this is absolutely unacceptable in a modern, stable democracy. I don't think its as nefarious as some are portraying it, calling it obvious electoral fraud and a stolen election, but it certainly is gross incompetence which is not much better.
|
#
¿
Nov 22, 2014 01:40
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 22, 2024 08:39 |
|
|
My Imaginary GF posted:I'm going to take a wild guess that your national assembly has a habit of chronically under-funding your electoral commission? No, not at all, at least not that I've heard. They don't even have that excuse to fall back on. They just completely dropped the ball on this. I don't know if they didn't send out enough public service TV spots about the voting changes this year or if the spots weren't clear enough (though they seemed pretty clear to me) or what the issue is, having to invalidate 27% of votes because people didn't fill the ballots out correctly is indicative of some level of failure on the part of the government. Again, I don't think it was intentional or nefarious, just completely incompetent. fake edit; I just looked it up and its actually up to 40% invalid votes in some electoral precincts.  real edit: I should also mention that there have been some attempts at small scale electoral fraud as well including ballot box stuffing and vote buying but they've been small scale and discovered by the appropriate authorities. A Pale Horse fucked around with this message at 01:58 on Nov 22, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Nov 22, 2014 01:54
|
|
|
Tevery Best posted:Actually, a few months ago, they had changed the subcontractor for the computer systems handling the election (because the old company produced the results with delays steadily growing with every election, going up to several hours), but only received between 0,8 mln and 1 mln PLN for that purpose every year, which, from what I understand, is way less than needed for that purpose. Fair enough, I hadn't heard that before. I still don't think they're chronically underfunded because the previous five or six elections have gone pretty much without a hitch and I haven't heard of cuts to the election budget this go around that would excuse what we've been seeing. As an aside one thing that made me happy was just how poorly KNP and SLD did. KNP for obvious reasons but SLD because maybe they'll finally move on from Miller and the rest of his cronies and try to actually become a viable voting alternative to PO rather than a rudderless, sinking post communist barge of a party (lol, probably not though). I didn't vote in these elections because my residency is registered in a different place than I live and I'm not traveling 60 km to vote for people who don't actually have any impact on my life but the candidate I would have supported looks like he's going to win in the second round for city president and PO carried both the city council and the Sejmik of the Wojewodztwo I live in so I'm reasonably pleased.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 22, 2014 12:18
|
|
|
Dessel posted:Are there any trustworthy English articles about the "voting catastrophe" in Poland? I cannot find ones citing "a 19-year-old" supposedly being responsible about a part of the voting system, either. There's not much detail in the English speaking media that I've seen other than broad overview articles like this: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-11-19/polish-opposition-calls-for-local-vote-rerun-after-tally-glitch And I was being slightly hyperbolic about the 19 year old. A student is who designed the system so she may have been up to 26 years old assuming a traditional age student doing a post graduate degree. Still the point is that maybe asking a single student to design and program the electoral counting program for the entire country may not have been the best idea. In RE Mightypeon: There's no reason to blame the Russians, the program was so evidently terrible that it seems the average script kiddie could have broken it like a porcelain egg within 20 minutes and there's plenty of internal, shall we say "dissenters" who have much more motivation to gently caress with local elections than Russians. edit: for people interested in Poland news in English I found this site from national broadcaster Polish Radio that's completely in English and also has Russian and German services: http://thenews.pl/ A Pale Horse fucked around with this message at 13:18 on Nov 22, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Nov 22, 2014 13:13
|
|
|
Mokotow posted:It doesn't help that both the young left and the greens are total loons. When SLD croaks, there's literally nobody to fill their spot. It may just be that the left is temporarily dead in Poland for all practical purposes and we all have to live with that reality. I actually don't vote PO completely out of "lesser evil" mentality and support about as much as I disagree with in the party but I'd still like to have an alternative a little to the left of where they usually end up. Still the current population just doesn't support a party like Stronnictwo Demokratyczne which would actually be very close to what I actually believe and want so I'll keep voting for PO.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 22, 2014 16:56
|
|
|
Gantolandon posted:Stronnictwo Demokratyczne is far from being on the left, though - unless you're using Korwin Mikke's interpretation of the word, which also includes PO and PiS. I'm not saying they're necessarily left wing, they're pretty aggressively centrist, but they're more left wing than PO where it counts for me which is social issues.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 22, 2014 23:43
|
|
|
Mokotow posted:Didn't Yats declare a few months back he doesn't plan to stay PM? Yeah, the last thing Ukraine wants to do is change their laws to allow foreign nationals in cabinet positions. When Putin's puppet "wins" the next elections or two elections from now they might find that law very uncomfortable. Its a bad idea for any country really and as far as I know it never happens.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 27, 2014 16:31
|
|
|
Teddybear posted:How hosed, precisely, is Russia's economy? I know they're very dependent on oil revenue and that the latest dive in prices can't have helped them-- that, combined with sanctions would have to make it pretty rough. I don't know if anyone knows for sure just yet, but hopefully hosed enough that they decide adventuring outside their borders isn't worth the sanctions and not hosed enough that it causes a complete economic collapse, though the margin there might be razor thin.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 28, 2014 20:17
|
|
|
Ardennes posted:It won't though, while there may be celebrations over the collapse of the Russian economy and its dire effect on the population ("Wrong. Russia is evil. Not "Russia is evil"."), if anything it will push the situation further towards political radicalization. The out for the Russian people is for their government to back down and stop interfering with their neighbors but since Putin would rather crash the Russian economy than lose face I guess you were right after all.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 28, 2014 23:53
|
|
|
By mightypeon's logic the USA was restrained in Iraq too because compared to what they could have done invading and occupying a country is no big deal. I mean that's the logical conclusion of that logic, by doing anything less than eradicating your enemy brutally and indiscriminately you're being restrained to some degree. 
|
|
#
¿
Nov 29, 2014 13:50
|
|
|
Lustful Man Hugs posted:That quiz... poo poo makes no sense. What the gently caress is a Right-Leaning Anarchist Humanist Liberal supposed to mean even? I thought Anarchists are pretty much always left wing and also almost the diametric opposite of Liberal (unless they mean Liberal in the American sense?). Its a fun way to waste two minutes I guess but don't put much stock in the results.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 29, 2014 23:47
|
|
|
Guildencrantz posted:In happier news, social progress is still a thing in Eastern Europe! A city in my region just elected Poland's first openly gay MP to become Poland's first openly gay mayor. In quite a landslide, too, about 60-40 percent. This was quite surprising especially since he only made it to the runoff by the slimmest of margins and the PO candidate was projected to win quite handily. Good for Biedron. Since becoming a MP he's really dedicated himself to working for his constituency and was named as one of the most hard working MPs of the current Parliament so I guess that, along with PO fatigue won out over the latent homophobia. Its definitely a step in the right direction.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 1, 2014 11:50
|
|
|
HUGE PUBES A PLUS posted:Members of the National Electoral Commission of Poland resigned after failures in the computer system. Since this is google translated and some of it is hard to understand maybe I can clarify a little: The entire electoral commission resigned because the vote counting from the first round took much longer than it should have, up to 12 days in some areas because of the catastrophic failure of the vote tallying computer program. Additionally almost 20% of the total votes were invalidated due to errors of voters. The criticism of the electoral commission is twofold: first that they waited way too long before deciding to go to a manual vote count once it was clear the automated system failed. The second criticism is that they in adequately informed voters of the correct voting procedure resulting in such a high number of invalid votes. The electoral commission's defense is that the parliament are the ones who mandated the changes to the electoral system in 2011 that resulted in these problems and are now trying to blame the NEC.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 2, 2014 09:17
|
|
|
Mokotow posted:Come to think of it, it's surprising it took that long for PKW to collapse, since it's a purely administrative institution that is run by a board of retired high court judges. Being a judge, even a high court one, doesn't mean you're a good administrator. The board is needed for checking voting legality and giving its seal of approval, but probably shouldn't manage things like IT systems. Most of the board members are in their seventies and probbably never worked with computers during their careers, and here they are, responsible for introducing a vote calculation and management system for a 40 million country. A project like that would challenge and keep a huge IT company busy for years. I completely agree. Its really outside their professional competence and should be handled by an independent contractor conforming to a set of regulations put forth by the PKW and then checked by another independent contractor or by some sort of technical adviser to the PKW. I'm absolutely fine with them resigning as a result of the shambolic elections but I hope that whoever is called up into the new Commission is given more time to implement an automated system than until the next elections which are already in May of next year. Until the new system has been thoroughly vetted and tested we can continue to hand count votes like we have since the fall of communism.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 2, 2014 11:51
|
|
|
OddObserver posted:I am a bit curious: what was so confusing about the voting procedure? 20% invalid rate is insane. The problem lies partly in the Polish language. A ballot in Polish is called a Karta while a sheet of paper is called a kartka, the instructions on the ballot and in the polling precincts was to mark one vote per Karta but each Karta was made up of multiple pages (kartka), it was essentially a voting booklet with each party on a different page of the ballot. Apparently a lot of people misinterpreted the instructions and marked a vote on each page (kartka) of the ballot (karta) rather than one for the whole booklet. If there are multiple marks on an election ballot by law it is invalid. This was the first time we've used this system rather than a single sheaf of paper with all the candidates from all the parties on it. In addition my countrymen are notorious for not reading instructions so the thinking is that through a combination of carelessness, unclear instructions and the new system a lot of people just hosed up. What's more is that in the 2011 revision to the electoral law which the PKW mentioned in their defense the government suspended the responsibility for electoral precincts to report why ballots were invalidated as they had previously been required to do so we don't know for sure why so many were invalidated and the above is mostly an assumption. I hope that's made things slightly clearer.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 2, 2014 15:44
|
|
|
A Buttery Pastry posted:I can't help but consider the possibility of them deliberately being given a task they would have no chance of succeeding at, specifically for the purpose of getting rid of them so Poland can move towards being a managed democracy. The simple explanation of dumb politicians is probably a tad more likely though. PKW is not going away, the members resigned but new members are to be appointed by the end of the week by the Constitutional Tribunal (Supreme Constitutional Court) and heads of local high courts. Its a non political organization as the judiciary in Poland is professional, not elected.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 2, 2014 19:37
|
|
|
A Buttery Pastry posted:By possibility, I meant more in the sense that this would be the backstory of some Putin/Orban like ruler of Poland in a lovely spy thriller. I know this is hard to believe but Poland is a stable liberal democracy not much different than western European ones. We are not Bulgaria or Hungary and certainly not Russia where something like that is possible anymore. Kaczynski might like to be Orban but the fucker can't even win an election since 2007 so the threat of those sorts of things is remote at best. Korwin-Mikke might be that sort of threat, but his current polling numbers are around 3-4%
|
|
#
¿
Dec 2, 2014 20:06
|
|
|
As Mokotow said there were separate cards for each administrative level. The election booklets I described were only for the highest voivodeship level (think State elections in the U.S.) and yes each party had a separate page in the booklet with all its candidates listed on that page. Because Poland uses the De Hondt method party list proportional representation system each party puts forth an entire list of candidates rather than a single candidate like in the U.S. and the number of seats won is awarded based on the percentage of the vote the entire party gets with the candidates receiving the most individual votes within an electoral list receiving those awarded seats. The other electoral cards for the powiat, gmina and miejskie (think county, commune and city) levels were (I think) the old kinds of voting cards. The 20% invalidation was only for the Voivodeship level. The overall level of invalidated votes for all levels was about 9% with the most straighforward city president (mayor) elections having less than 2% of votes invalidated.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 2, 2014 21:14
|
|
|
Oh gently caress!  I hope its more three mile island than Chernobyl level.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 3, 2014 11:55
|
|
|
In unrelated news Transparency International released their Corruption Perception Index for 2014 today. Denmark is the least corrupt country in the world while Ukraine is the most corrupt in Europe coming in 142nd out of 175 countries. Russia is not much better coming in 136th. Italy is the most corrupt country in the EU at 69th. Full interactive map here: http://www.transparency.org/cpi2014/results
|
|
#
¿
Dec 3, 2014 12:04
|
|
|
OddObserver posted:They did get a shipment of coal from S. Africa, apparently at very good price, too --- well, at least it was cheaper than domestic coal from the currently occupied areas --- (which is partly because the latter is "pay people to work" subsidy with oligarchs skimming a huge portion off top). Unfortunately there was some political insanity involved for unclear reasons, so I am not sure if it will continue. Poland has a lot of delicious brown coal, I'm sure we could part with some for a fair price. If they try building an LNG terminal in Odessa I could easily see it becoming an integral part of Novorossiya all of a sudden.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 3, 2014 15:29
|
|
|
He's not wrong, lol. Orban is certainly the farthest right of any leader in the EU currently although neo-fascist might be a bit hyperbolic and a TV producer who's sole asset appears to be bundling money for the president is probably a terrible choice for ambassador to such a country. Like if he made her ambassador to Tuvalu or Bahamas or something, fine, but Hungary?
|
|
#
¿
Dec 3, 2014 22:06
|
|
|
Something completely off topic but worth sharing I think. A little boy in Poland has recovered from the deepest case of hypothermia ever recorded in medical history. His body temperature was just 12 degrees C (57 F) when he was found after he'd sleep walked outside during the night and wasn't found until seven hours later. Today they removed him from the respirator and he's now considered to be fully recovered with minimal to no apparent brain damage. The head treating physician called it a miracle. From the BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30319425 Despite our perpetually broke NHS Polish doctors have been doing a lot of good recently. First the world's first successful spinal cord repair earlier this year and now this.  Makes me proud to be a Polish physician.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 4, 2014 17:13
|
|
|
CommieGIR posted:That is amazing. I know the US DoD has been using induced hypothermia for troops with gunshot wounds that need major surgery during their transport to a hospital. This is an amazing discovery, and I hope the doctor that conducted it publishes. I'm sure it will be published in the medical literature, the head treating physician said there's been a lot of interest in the case from abroad but he hasn't had the time to deal with it yet. It may just be a one off fluke, some people, especially little children are able to survive things that are normally completely fatal and it has no wider applications beyond the one case, but its absolutely worth analyzing the procedures that were followed from his discovery until now and see if there are wider ranging implications. The head treating physician gave a lot of credit to first responders who knew that actually for cases of deep hypothermia the procedure is to pack them in ice during transport rather than immediately trying to warm them and that warming must be carried out very slowly and methodically so as not to induce shock and multi system organ failure.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 4, 2014 18:23
|
|
|
Blowdryer posted:http://www.salon.com/2014/12/04/new_york_times_propagandists_exposed_finally_the_truth_about_ukraine_and_putin_emerges/ Dude seems to be a communist useful idiot and has a strong anti-American/anti-Western bent given his publishing history. The article is filled with the same type of bullshit we've seen in this very thread from posters like Mightypeon and in earlier iterations from babychoom and Starsomethingorother (can't remember his name) in that he buys into that Ukraine is naturally part of Russia's sphere of influence and its provocative for the West and Amerikkka to support Ukrainian self-determination rather than just rejecting them and letting God-Emperor Vladimir Vladimirovitch have his way with her. Its typical far left anti western/anti-american tripe. In my opinion. 
|
|
#
¿
Dec 4, 2014 19:15
|
|
|
Mokotow posted:Oh A Pale Horse, don't you know the boy waking up is a miracle, and not a feat of modern medicine? I wasn't aware.  Blessed be Ojciec Tadeusz Rydzyk, Fronda, and the holy mohair beret army!
|
|
#
¿
Dec 4, 2014 20:19
|
|
|
Libluini posted:This is weird. I just read in the news our foreign minister thinks the ongoing conflict with Russia will probably go on for many years. Also, chancellor Merkel is allegedly thinking about even more sanctions on Russia. I'm glad she's finally coming around. Nothing meaningful can really be done without Germany so I hope what you say is real.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 5, 2014 15:41
|
|
|
Also while it may consolidate his power in the short term, in the long term if people who were previously middle class (whatever there exists of that class in Russia) and even the well off suddenly find themselves poor by outside standards or if the goods they could previously afford become too expensive do to ludicrous import bans and inflation that power will eventually falter and fall apart. It may not lead to a coup per se, but social destabilization leading to further economic downturn is a strong possibility if Putin blindly stays the course.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 13, 2014 14:45
|
|
|
TheSpookyDanger posted:Hahahaha yes please tell me how 5% of the Russian populace somehow magically get the power to change Russia. The same way less than 5% of the population was able to change Ukrainian trajectory for starters.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 16, 2014 19:25
|
|
|
TheSpookyDanger posted:Hmmmm yes citizens of the Russian Federation should engage in a military occupation in the heart of Moscow. This is definitely not an idiot idea and will certainly work. What's Chechnya? How else do you expect to topple a dictator other than armed struggle? Do you think its possible to win it democratically? To talk him out of office? To get him to renounce his power just because he's a good guy? Yeah, if it meant enough to the Russian people not to live in a nationalistic kleptocracy they would march on the Kremlin and demand Putin and his cronies step down just like the protesters at the Maidan did. It would lead to bloodshed and death without a doubt but with enough engagement and pressure they could force him out or spark a civil war. But they don't because most of them, while they were able to push weaker states around without repercussion they felt big and important about the glory of the Russian people. Now that the poo poo they threw at the fan is starting to splatter them in the face there's going to be a lot of sob stories about poor innocent Russian people not really liking Putin either and how they are prisoners in their own country. Maybe its even true for some of them, but the majority loved when Putin was slapping Russia's dick all over Georgia's and Ukraine's face and laughing so I see no reason to feel sorry for them now that they're about to get their economic poo poo pushed in.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 16, 2014 20:05
|
|
|
Nosfereefer posted:So what grand and terrible punishment does the American public deserve for what America did to Iraq? I'm not really interested in getting into another "But America does bad things too!" derail but I'll just say that the main perk of being an actual super power rather than a paper one is that no one can really punish you. I'm not saying that's good, to be clear, just that its so.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 16, 2014 20:14
|
|
|
Nosfereefer posted:The Putin regime is clearly in the wrong, and Americas actions past or present are irrelevant. My point is rather that cheering for the economic collapse of Russia as some kind of just dessert is hosed up. I'm not hoping for an out and out collapse. Like I said earlier in the thread my hope is that the sanctions and unfavorable economic situation hits Russia strong enough to cause Putin to reconsider his Ukrainian adventure (and all other planned or imagined European adventures) but not so strong as to lead to complete collapse and destabilization.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 16, 2014 20:43
|
|
|
TheSpookyDanger posted:Are you actually autistic? Do you actually have an argument?
|
|
#
¿
Dec 17, 2014 01:55
|
|
|
Ardennes posted:The irony is they didn't and only Crimea at this point are being hit with sanctions to that degree. I think the plan is to make Crimea as much of a burden to Russia as possible, unfortunately in this case that also means making the (ostensibly innocent) inhabitants miserable. Not the most humanitarian minded strategy, but not exactly a war crime or violation of international law either.  Happy belated Christmas to everyone by the way.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 27, 2014 12:12
|
|
|
Looks like Ba'tka is doing some Christmas cleaning this year. He dismissed the prime minister, several cabinet ministers and the president of the national bank as well as several regional governors and many presidents of nationalized companies. Article in Polish: http://www.tvn24.pl/bialorus-lukaszenka-dokonal-czystek-na-szczytach-wladzy,501666,s.html
|
|
#
¿
Dec 27, 2014 16:18
|
|
|
Meanwhile in Poland the only remaining relevant left of center party is going into its death throes. SLD, the post communist successor party and most successful post liberation leftist group nominated a complete nobody for the Presidential elections in a few month. While there have been calls for months now to nominate Ryszard Kalisz, a serious and generally well like pragmatic leftist politician it appears the infighting in the party made this impossible (Kalisz was kicked out of SLD several years ago for dallying with other leftist groups). Instead they nominated some not very well known reporter and church scholar named Magdalena Ogorek who while very pretty and young, has 0 political experience and almost as little name recognition. Additionally they appear not to have vetted her very well because its emerging that she is a social conservative who supported a Polish medical doctor and professor who openly lied to one of his pregnant patients who was carrying a baby with a severe birth defect (anencephaly [zombaby]) just so that she would be unable to get an abortion (and was later fired from his post by Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, the president of Warsaw). She'll be lucky to pull 3%. With the total collapse of Palikot's movement and now apparently SLD it leaves the Polish political scene completely bereft of left leaning parties. PO is now the most left wing party on the scene (something Kaczynski has been saying for years ) despite being not too dissimilar from traditional American Republicans (not Tea Partiers). Despite what many of you think about me being a frothing nationalist, this is not a good thing. It shifts the political center further to the right than it is and definitely than it should be and means that any meaningful progress on social issues is likely dead in the water for the time being. Its amazing how bad Leszek Miller is as a party leader and how terribly he's managed SLD over the past several years. Its even more amazing that they can't get rid of him because there's no one better to replace him. Requiescat in Pace SLD, you were mostly poo poo.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 10, 2015 17:34
|
|
|
Mightypeon posted:Anancephalia? But that is like an automatic death sentence? The gently caress? Yes but you see abortion is murder. That was his literal defense. Abortion is murder in all circumstances. Poland already has very limited access to abortions but one of the few conditions that does allow for it is genetic defect not consistent with survival but that wasn't enough for the good professor. He lied to the mother and told her that the defects weren't that bad and that her baby would live. By the time she got a second opinion it was past the 22 week cut off point allowable for abortions. She had to carry a baby she knew would die very shortly after birth to full term because of the good doctor. When confronted he had absolutely no remorse and of course the church and right wing politicians flocked to support him. It also turns out that the new candidate for president for the major left wing party thought the professor was correct in his actions. Shits hosed up.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 11, 2015 03:14
|
|
|
Mightypeon posted:I mean seriously, anancephalia literally means that the baby has no brain. Didnt he also massively endangered the live of the mother because this? My major is in biophysics, but common sense tells me that this kind of anomalies would also risk the mother because they are that anomal and would likely prevent a normal birth from occuring. The defect itself is not dangerous to the mother but there is always the chance that such a baby will die in utero and the mother won't notice which can lead to severe medical complications. But like Guildencrantz said, what is certain is the psychological trauma of the fact that you're carrying what is destined to be a corpse very shortly after birth for 9 full months compounded by the fact that you've been the victim of severe malpractice. The person you entrusted your health to lied to your face then implied you're a bad person because you wanted to remove the brainless baby from your womb. The man is a disgrace to the medical profession and should have been charged by the prosecutor for endangering his patient, lying to her and general medical malpractice. But of course he's the darling of the right wing so nope! Its situations like these that need a left wing to fight for the victims of such casual, thoughtless brutality and why SLD nominating a person for president who supported the professor is such a slap in the face.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 11, 2015 12:05
|
|
|
I think he looks like a slightly confused vampire.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 12, 2015 18:28
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 22, 2024 08:39 |
|
|
Dolash posted:Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. The writer praises Russia and Putin for strength and says Europe and America lack the resolve to back Ukraine to the hilt, so the natural conclusion is that America and Europe should sack up, go all in on protecting Ukraine from Russian aggression and dare Russia to try something because that's what a "strong" country does. Why would president Cruz change his name to Hilary? 
|
|
#
¿
Jan 12, 2015 18:35
|
|