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[XXSockXX]

The titles are funny. Sounds like forming a Belgian government is essentially couples therapy. 

The region / community division doesn't seem that weird. At least it's no surprise that the German community has no own region, since they're a later addendum and a small minority.

[Sheb]

And frankly, I tried to make it simple. For example, the Flemish community and regions governments and parliaments merged, with their seat in Brussels. The french-speaking community (Actually named "Walloonia-Brussels Federation) got a parliament made up of MPs from the Waloonian and Brussels parliaments. Walloonia and the French-speaking community don't have a common government, but the same guy is minister-president of both, and another guy is minister for for finance of both. We've got French-speaking parts in Flanders (and vice-versa) with special status.

Frankly, it's not surprising we kept going without a government, we just have so many layers of government there's total redundancy.

P.S. The German community came way before federalization. I have no idea why they got a community but no region.

[10ebbor10]

I think it's because a piece of Germany we got after the first (or second, not sure) World war.

Also then there's also BHV, which started the entire 2007-2011 political crisis. Basically, it's a Flemish speaking area, surrounding Brussels. However, the majority of the people living there speak French. This results in those municipalities having facilities to accommodate for French speaking people, and separate facilities for Dutch speaking people. Often it gets quite ridiculous. For example 2 cultural centers in the same municipality, an excellently outfitted center, that nobody visits as it exclusively does Dutch shows, and an older building that's technically over capacity and needs renovating that only does French stuff.

Actually, IIRC, the mayors of a few of these municipalities still haven't been appointed, because they send the election letters of the French speaking citizens in French, rather than Dutch.

[XXSockXX]

Ok, now it does sound complicated... Sounds like you need a federal reform.

I think it's because a piece of Germany we got after the first (or second, not sure) World war.

Yeah, Eupen-Malmedy, after WW1.

[Owlbread]

Much of the UKIP party machinery is made up of (openly racist) ex-National Front members, as admitted by one of the co-founders.

In Scotland, part of the reason why UKIP were able to get 10% of the vote is that the BNP and the National Front and other far-right, Fascist parties lost about 6% of their collective vote from 2009. They probably voted for UKIP.

[10ebbor10]

Actually, I'd love to see what the results would be if Europe suddenly had mandatory voting everywhere.

[LordSlowpoke]

the party which promised to do away with mandatory voting would win by a landslide

[notquitethere]

Rather than mandatory elections, voting could be made much easier by rolling out e-voting and have the government email or text people to remind them on the day. If they made it three-click: open the link, confirm your identity, and choose your candidates, there'd be a much higher turn out.

[XXSockXX]

Rather than mandatory elections, voting could be made much easier by rolling out e-voting and have the government email or text people to remind them on the day. If they made it three-click: open the link, confirm your identity, and choose your candidates, there'd be a much higher turn out.

I doubt that, it would just be like ignoring spam mails. Voting as it is (here at least) requires very little effort.
The problem is rather disinterest in politics than anything else. Making voting easier (or mandatory) wouldn't force people to think more about politics.

[10ebbor10]

I'd rather not. E-voting fails on all qualities that a verifiable voting process needs to have.

1) The ability to recount
2) Election security
3) Identity verification
4) Electoral fraud prevention
5) Anonymous voting guarantees

Rather than mandatory elections, voting could be made much easier by rolling out e-voting and have the government email or text people to remind them on the day. If they made it three-click: open the link, confirm your identity, and choose your candidates, there'd be a much higher turn out.

I doubt that, it would just be like ignoring spam mails. Voting as it is (here at least) requires very little effort.
The problem is rather disinterest in politics than anything else. Making voting easier (or mandatory) wouldn't force people to think more about politics.

Interest in politics is higher in countries with mandatory voting than in countries that don't have it. I mean, if you're not going to vote, you're certainly not going to interest yourself in politics.

If you have to vote anyway, you might as well do a short election quiz or something small to see who you're going to vote for, and that's the beginning of getting people interested.

[vagel7]

10ebbor10

We have had e-voting in Estonia for years now, starting from 2005. We have also taken part in the European Parliament e-voting. Our e-voting systems are much more secure than those that even banks use.

Then again we are probably the most digitized country in the world, since pretty much everything can be done by home with your ID card, we also have Mobile-ID. Our medical data is held in cloud storage and you can declare your taxes from your mobile. Life in that aspect is made very easy and accessible. I also mean absolutely no harm when I say that when I travel around even Europe, then it feels like stone-age since I am so used to what we have here. We have free wifi pretty much even in the middle of the forest, G3 connection and as I previously said, easy connection with the state. Hell Maastricht University is sending me my application results via regular post and wants me to send a copy of my diploma also via regular post. I have never used the postal service in Estonia before, because everything is done by digitally signed digital documents.

[10ebbor10]

Still, the fact that you can't do recounts means that I'm pretty sure, it can't be deployed in some countries. And the system might be as secure as you want, people's computers aren't.

[Ukrainian Ranger]

We have had e-voting in Estonia for years now, starting from 2005. We have also taken part in the European Parliament e-voting. Our e-voting systems are much more secure than those that even banks use.

And how do you prevent a person to be bribed or forced to vote "properly"? With proper voting that is hard to do, with E-voting you only need to stand behind the voter and look in his monitor

I think that E-voting is a bad idea that can be exploited in many-many ways

[Sheb]

And under some conditions, "excess" vote in some places (like Brussels) can be used to get seat in neighboring circumscription. I'm not even sure where the French-speaking people outside Brussels are voting (Flanders? Brussels? They can choose?).

And then we have the provinces, who are holdover from the French invasion of 1815 and do... well, no one is sure. They run some schools, some parks, some cultural stuff... They also have responsibility for civil protection stuff.

Frankly, Belgium is what you'd get if you decided to do the whole career mode of KSP by taking a design and just keeping adding parts to it, never taking or moving a part once it's added.

But complexity is not the only source of waste. With only two groups, you have people just wanting to "keep up with the Jones". For example, a proton-therapy center was recently opened by a joint effort between a French and Flemish university. Now, a few years ago, the state body tasked with evaluating what treatments are cost-effective advised that we probably don't have enough patients to make it worth getting a proton-therapy center, but hey, cancer rates are climbing, why not.

Except of course that center was in Flanders. So the Walloon government decided we couldn't let them flemish out-proton us, and now we're going to waste 50 millions on a second one in Walloonia.

[MonkeyHead]

Today I learnt Belgium does not do sharing.