Guest post by “In an unexpected turn of events, one of the key committees in the European Parliament voted recently to weaken a reform of the copyright monopoly for allowing re-publication and access to orphan works, pieces of our cultural heritage where no copyright monopoly holder can be located. […] There’s a problem with this. There are 24 seats in the committee, and one group (non-inscrits) was absent, lacking deputies to fill that person’s vote. So, there should have been 23 votes at the most. But we just counted 12 votes for reform and 14 against. That’s 26.” Sometimes, people complain that the EU has a democratic deficit. It looks like we had a democratic surplus this time.
That sounds an awful lot like voter fraud. Someone needs to lose their seat over this.
Weeeellll… if we reduce the number of members further, the voter turnout will probably increase above 113%, making the problem even larger :p
Seems like supply and demand at work, since there are so many politicians out there today willing to sell their vote we’re seeing some of them offering a ‘two votes for the price of one’ policy in order to be competitive.
After thorough investigation, it was determined that the three extra votes against reform were lodged by the MPAA, RIA, and the U.S. Govt
Doesn’t the EU have a method of roll call voting? Then you know exactly who voted and what they voted.
The title is misleading, since it was a vote at a committee not a parliament session, which makes a huge difference, since the amendment can still be proposed during the parliament session, it just means it won’t be part of the text that will be proposed at the beginning of the discussions.
The way those committees works is that they look at the list of amendments, and then add to the text those that have large consensus, mark those that are likely to be accepted in the full session to be voted quickly at the beginning of the session, and keep the more controversial ones for debate during the parliament session.
While it is kind of weird to have a 113% voter turnout, those votes are more informal than anything else, most likely hand raised, with someone doing the counting, and in case of an almost tie, the amendment is put in the list of amendment to be debated.
This is basically why the head of the committee denied a re-vote. Since no matter what, that amendment does not reach consensus and therefore need to be debated during the session.
The whole thing feels more like buzz from Christian Engström than anything, and I guess the committees should be more careful in their vote accounting in the future.