The Green Party won over almost 11 % of the voting German population resulting in 68 seats in the Bundestag in 2009 – they have been in parliament since 1983 where – curiously, not only the liberal party of Germany, FDP, supported a non-confidence-vote that toppled their own coalition with the Social-Democrats SPD and made Helmut Kohl, CEO of the conservative party CDU, chancellor, but also saw the first Green Party members occupy seats in the German equivalent to the federal parliament.
How many of those seats, till 2day, a party gets, follows a system recommended by experts @ fairvote.ca in order 2 increase democracy in the great North – in good old this very similar electoral system sets the threshold 2 get for the proportional part (where the party average across the country is counted) at 5 percent, Austria thinks 4 is better, and the Knesset, the parliament of Israel needs 2 percent of the total vote to keep the madness alive and kicking with their own contributions from the inside. The Republic of Weimar, named after the constitution written in that city, had none, and, subsequently found little support within the German people, perceiving parliament as a box of mindless fighters, useless in solving the urging problems related to industrialization and especially not when the Nazis started intimidating their way to a coup, even set parliament on fire to blame a mentally tormented person. The tunnel which was used in this scheme is now a steady piece in the permanent historic exposition of the Bundestag to reveal how the German public was manipulated. To update, please replace “industrialization” with “global warming”, “steady nuclear fall-out” or “loss of potable water and fertile soils”, whichever one u prefer.
Meanwhile, here, again, Elizabeth May (after winning 6 percent of the popular vote in 2008) was excluded from the big televised debate with all candidates (who r these people deciding that? what guidelines r applied when decision making?). A public out cry got her in the debate after all, here is her petition for this time: http://greenparty.ca/debate-action.
And this is an interesting article about that: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Federal+court+denies+Elizabeth+join+leaders+debate/4562102/story.html
– imagine all the frustrated non-voters voted green over here, because their vote actually counts!
finally, I must quote from the wiki-page for Electoral Reform:
“Continuous change
There are many such movements globally, in almost all democratic countries, as part of the basic definition of a democracy is the right to change the rules. Political science is imperfect; electoral reforms seek to make politics work a bit better, a bit sooner. The solution to the problems of democracy tends to be “more democracy.” Electoral reform is a permanent feature of any healthy democracy.”
otherwise these guys to swap votes: http://www.votepair.ca/
lots more 2 say but 2 tired now. Later!