today: elections in Greece

[Gustaf]

There's a lot of people who like Belgium here...

[Umengus]

There's a lot of people who like Belgium here...

If you like chocolate, moulds-frites, football, tennis and socialism (or Welfare state), you will like my country!

[Gustaf]

There's a lot of people who like Belgium here...

If you like chocolate, moulds-frites, football, tennis and socialism (or Welfare state), you will like my country!

I like the working man's chocolate, Belgian chocolate is fancy but it doesn't beat the good ole Swedish Marabou...

I don't really like French Fries, actually, I don't like socialism and I don't see what Belgium has to do with football...but tennis, I have to give you that.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I recommend reading "A Tall Man in a Low Land" by Harry Pearson.
After that, it's impossible not to like Belgium

[Umengus]

There's a lot of people who like Belgium here...

If you like chocolate, moulds-frites, football, tennis and socialism (or Welfare state), you will like my country!

I like the working man's chocolate, Belgian chocolate is fancy but it doesn't beat the good ole Swedish Marabou...

I don't really like French Fries, actually, I don't like socialism and I don't see what Belgium has to do with football...but tennis, I have to give you that.

sacrilege!;) Football is the number one sport in Belgium. Belgium was semi-finalist in 1986 world cup and better than France in 2002.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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Where they were cheated from beating Brazil by a biased referee

[Gustaf]

There's a lot of people who like Belgium here...

If you like chocolate, moulds-frites, football, tennis and socialism (or Welfare state), you will like my country!

I like the working man's chocolate, Belgian chocolate is fancy but it doesn't beat the good ole Swedish Marabou...

I don't really like French Fries, actually, I don't like socialism and I don't see what Belgium has to do with football...but tennis, I have to give you that.

sacrilege!;) Football is the number one sport in Belgium. Belgium was semi-finalist in 1986 world cup and better than France in 2002.

Everyone was better than France in 2002... Sweden has a better record than that in the world cup but I don't talk of Sweden as football nation just b/c of that...

[Umengus]

lol but football is the main sport in Belgium. Not ski of another sport...

[minionofmidas]

I spent four summers on the Belgian coast as a kid.
Taught me to like fries, dislike mussles, and not to fear jellyfish and cool water:)
And later I twice spent a few days in Brussels.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Without Belguim there would be no chips! And think of the Beer!

It's a nice little country. A bit mad perhaps (what over country could have produced Rene Magritte?), but I like that

[minionofmidas]

Oh yeah. I was too young to know back then, but the Belgians brew the best beer in the world.
Leffe Radieuse!
Auderghem!

[minionofmidas]

Can anyone explain to me how the Greek system of seats distribution works?
If compared with D'Hondt, it's more favorable to the largest party and to third parties, but horribly unfair to the second party.
There are even two constituencies in Greece (Piraeus B and Dodecanese) where PASOK got the most votes but ND got more mandates!

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Basically Greek electoral Law says that the party that wins the most voters, has to have a majority in Parliament.

[minionofmidas]

Well, I actually went through the results and D'Hondt would have served that purpose just as well...
In that case (without national threshold; with those 12 seats not redistributed to the constituencies treated as a national constituency) the final tally is ND 157 (instead of 165), PASOK 132 (117), KKE 6 (12), Synapsismos 3 (6), LAOS 1 (0), DIKKI 1 (0)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yes... but people in Greece know that anything but a vote for the winners is wasted... which is great for ND and PASOK as it gets their supporters mobilised, but seriously... what's the point of having PR with a law like that?

[minionofmidas]

Could you just explain how that law works?
Pleeeese?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I'm not sure of the fiddly bits and everything but...

The party that wins a plurality of the vote wins a majority of the seats. There is a 3% threshold to win seats.
I think that Greece uses a closed list system for each electoral district, which makes it easier to fiddle the results to give one side a majority.

[dunn]

I think that all votes to parties not above the trashold in an area goes to the winning party