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ChrisfromMI

Listed below are comments made by ChrisfromMI between Monday, 8th June 2009 and Monday, 8th June 2009.

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Social democrat failure 04:20am on 08 Jun 2009 Hi, I know I'm from the united states so I'm sure most of you won't really give my point a second thought, BUT having said this, I don't understand this argument by some of the posters. To say that the EP lacks a mandate because only an average of 43% of Europeans voted(and by the way a few countries were well in the 90s)confuses me since we in the US never used that logic when our elections had even smaller percentages than that.

I am comparing this EP election to my country's legislative elections, and especially our 2006 elections as our turnout naturally is higher during a presidential year. The turn out for our lower house of Congress was only 36.8% and for the upper house was merely 29.7%. So by this "no mandate" logic, I guess for two years we lacked the same thing here in the US.

I would also like to point out that in 2006 was a "change" election with high voter dissatisfaction over the government at the time. Which then logic would dictate MORE people would have voted then our small part of our population.

So I guess overall I think this whole talking about EP as pointless because the lowest turnout ever has happened is in itself pointless. It doesn't matter if they have a mandate or not, they are still going to be a legislative body and they will continue to handle the EU budget and they will continue to have a say on European policy. So as someone who until the elections of 2008 was rather dissatisfied with my government, all you can do is vote that's the only way change will happen. Although I should add I don't really condone voting for racist political parties and the whole far-right thing is a bit scary from an outside perspective.

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