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960 points andrew918277 | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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darby_nine ◴[] No.40715654[source]
I find it somewhat disturbing that this sort of thing is not considered a career killer for politicians.
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Semaphor ◴[] No.40715673[source]
Almost nothing is. Local politicians fail upwards to the EU (at least in Germany) or some private job, if they fail at all. Most of the time, you can do what you want, and the voters don’t care.
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lukan ◴[] No.40715764[source]
"and the voters don’t care."

Then why did so many vote extremist anti EU? There just has been EU election in germany and the nationalist gained a lot. And none of the big parties otherwise said a clear no to that, so what could I do, except vote a small party against that, but too small to really do something?

Voters care. But they see often no point in voting anymore.

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Tuna-Fish ◴[] No.40715802[source]
That's precisely the thing. Whenever EU does something people don't like, they hate EU, not the council members who voted for it.
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gillesjacobs ◴[] No.40715900[source]
Because it is exactly the EU governance that lacks democratic representation, enabling unfavoured politicians to remain in significant power. You can only elect MEPs (via party lists) locally. The majority of legalislation is drafted by the technocratic European Commission and legislation is mostly passed through parlaiment unchanged from there.

There are many nationally disgraced politicians seating in the EP, EC or council. Only the ones in the EP were electible.

The people have correctly identified that a massive supranational unaccountable government is the problem, enabling corrupt people to keep ruling which undermines the core functioning of representative democracy.

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beeboobaa3 ◴[] No.40716057[source]
Yes, this is called a representative democracy. The fix is to vote for representatives who represent your values. Or run yourself.
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Am4TIfIsER0ppos ◴[] No.40716274[source]
Representative in what way? 700 MEPs for about 450M people means each one has 640k "constituents". Those "constituents" are really a fraction each person all smeared about. Lastly if they were actual people and an MEP were to hold a consultation to get their views it gives each person less than 1 minute each year assuming the MEP was available 24/7/365.
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1. _heimdall ◴[] No.40716373{3}[source]
Well if they're modeling if after what we have in the US they pretty much nailed it. 435 representatives for 330M people or around 758k constituents per rep.