Another orange envelope on its way to the Netherlands (Pietro Naj-Oleari, 20-05-2009)

Each member of our team will be voting since there is always time to vote. Here at the EP headquarters we will on election night be as much waiting for the results to know how the “camembert“  will be divided as we will be waiting for the turn-out figures.

As an incentive for candidates to continue campaigning: one third of our staff has not made up their mind yet less than two weeks before the elections. What everybody does know, is whether they will be voting for a candidate in their home country or for a Belgian candidate. Remember, for European elections it is possible to vote in the EU-country of residence. Only three people are saving the honour of our unit by making a true European choice: they will be voting in Belgium. Well, actually only two people are saving our honour since one is voting in Belgium because his own government took away his voting rights!

In case you did not make up your mind yet, continue reading to find some tips and tricks to make your choice.

Firstly, if you still barely know what the European Parliament is made of, watch this video explaining the groups with a chocolate cake. It seems the British conservatives taste deliciously! Bear in mind that many parties running for election are not represented in the current Parliament. You can check out the voting lists in your country  to know all participating parties in these elections. You will find the lists on the right site on your county page, once they’ve become available.

You may have a cross-party issue on your mind you want to fulfil. You may want to vote for a candidate that will look after gay rights, or you may want to vote for a MEP with special attention for disabled people. Just contact the spokesperson of the party of your choice and ask if there is a candidate on their list looking after your specific interests.

Finally, many candidates are using this year the social media for their campaign. The candidate you want to know more about may have put a video on YouTube, a page on Facebook or keep a blog and in any case (s)he will have a website. If you were able to find this blog, you certainly will be able to find more info online to make up your mind! 

Most citizens will be mainly interested in knowing how their party did. But what if in the next elections turn-out figures would be as exciting to them as they are to us…. Suppose we would slightly change the rules for the elections in 2014 and let the citizens of each EU-country really get the politicians they deserve…. by number.

We could link the number of MEPs per country to the turn-out in the country (we would need to find a solution for Belgium where voting is compulsory). If citizens would know they could be poorly represented – not necessarily by ideology but by nationality - in case they would not show up, they may be very keen on voting to gain an extra MEP or two for their country. How exciting the elections would be in that case ……

No, I am not only dreaming and actually did last week a down-to-earth thing and casted my vote. So one more orange envelope is on its way to The Hague… And no, I will not tell here what lady I voted for.

This minstrel has seen some changes himself

Writing in Prospect magazine this month Steven Johnson and Paul Starr debate the question of whether the changes brought to the media by the internet herald “a golden age of serious journalism” or whether it will bring down standards.

As someone whose job is to write on the web, I naturally hope it will be the latter – especially in regard to political reporting and content. The European elections are just a few weeks away and we are beavering away at all manner of things for the website, YouTube, Facebook – you name it – trying to persuade people to vote. We even have some viral stuff – and I’m not talking about swine flu either.

A recent gift by my Polish colleague, Leszek, got me thinking about how different methods of political communication have changed over the last 200 years.

It was of a reprint of “The Times” after the Battle of Waterloo providing a fascinating insight into news back in 1815. The front page is filled with adverts for lodgings, meetings, Governesses and tutors. The inside pages have a full account of the battle itself by the Duke of Wellington and an “official bulletin” from Downing Street which celebrated the end of “a long and sanguinary conflict”.

This was political communication 1815 style. The date is 22 June, 4 days after the battle – a period of time that would be unthinkable now in the modern news cycle.

This was of course the newspaper age – something that is perhaps still with us – but which faces a serious challenge for its survival from the internet and global recession. It survived the telegram, the radio, cinema and the TV, which have all indelibly shaped politics. Above all TV has shaped modern politics. Famously in the 1960 TV presidential debate between Richard Nixon and John F Kennedy those who listened to it on radio thought Nixon had won, whilst the TV audience gave victory to Kennedy due to hid healthier pallor and Nixon’s perspiration.

A flickr of genius

Traditionally the best way to convince the voters is by making speeches to large numbers of voters. Many tended to be long-winded affairs with the oratorical giant like William Gladstone holding his listeners spellbound for hours as he denounced the policies of his old foe Disraeli.

Recently a lawyer from Illinois has been in the news for getting elected as US President in part due to his speaking skills. It was another lawyer from that State, Abraham Lincoln, who in November 1863 combined oratory and brevity in equal measure with a speech at the site of the Gettysburg battlefield.

Renowned orator Edward Everett delivered a two hour oration before Lincoln – but who remembers that now? After he had finished Lincoln stood up and spoke for perhaps 2 to 3 minutes summarizing the Union’s aims in the Civil War in 10 sentences, which have rightly gone down in history.

Whatever the format I think well chosen words and an effective delivery always have impact. Recently a certain British MEP delivered a pretty blistering assault on Prime Minister Gordon Brown after his speech to the European Parliament. With the help of the old media – namely the right-wing newspapers extolling its brilliance – it has now been viewed over 2.2 million times. Whether or not one shares his views, he has demonstrated is that the YouTube format does work when carrying effective speeches from Brussels and Strasbourg.

Face to Face book

One of the most tried and trusted way to persuade the voters is by meeting them – although as any candidate will tell you this can are a nerve wracking affair.

Being “on the stump” is a good way for aspiring candidates to meet their electorate. My sister, who lives in London, recently told me that a nice old lady from the Conservative party had knocked on her door the other day and asked whether she would be voting for them. Something about this quaint British tradition of canvassing door to door I find really appealing. It gives you a chance to see your candidates and get a measure of them.

Naturally, if they are the party you have no intention of voting for the trick is to keep them talking at length on the doorstep so they have less time to go to other people…

Here in Belgium they have this nice habit of coming round markets and asking if you intend to vote for them – this weekend I accumulated several leaflets from the Green party as I sat having a coffee. The slight irony of the greens giving out leaflets has always struck me but I’m sure it’s recycled paper!

Poster child

The Belgians also erect billboards around the town so that parties and candidates can paste up their pictures it can be quite amusing and parochial, but it’s faintly reassuring.  Election posters are a whole genre in themselves. It also seems the worse the regime – the better the posters. I defy anyone not to be impressed by the visual splendour Soviet posters depicting all manner of Communist “triumphs”.

Politics online

In the 2004 European Parliamentary elections the internet played a part but it is in the last 5 years that it has really come of age with YouTube, Facebook and Twitter entering the lexicon. Given the amount of people who use them I doubt they will fade easily.

Here in the Web Communication Unit of the Parliament’s Communication Department have not only developed a website in the EU’s 22 languages that gets over 100,00 visits a day but have embraced them along with Facebook, MySpace and flickr to try and get the message across.

The good thing about this is that it allows people to communicate with us and get their own message across.

The latter happened to me last week. In an interesting coffee break with some hard working colleagues who are totally devoted to the communication campaign, I learnt that in some countries, like Spain, the chicken of the installation is bilingual. It means that its messages are delivered not only in Spanish, but also in Catalan, Basque and Galician.  

Maybe this ability with languages is one of the reasons why this motive has become one of the most popular among the citizens. Even if cat lover Thibault thought everyone would fall in love with the cat and the lion, the truth is that the “beauty queen” of the campaign is the chicken. By popular request. One of them even got a love letter in the form of graffiti: “Je t’aime, poulet” (I love you, chicken). A public love declaration many women and men would dream of. Well, the chicken got it in just a week: it was love at first sight.  

In other cities passion towards the giant chicken has reached a point I could have never imagined. Like a pop idol, one of them was “assaulted” by fans that took away the labels dressing it. As the campaign invites voters to do, someone in Madrid made a choice: they wanted a naked chicken.

The naked chicken in Madrid (photo from the EP Flickr account)

Some said it was vandalism (“the chicken was vandalised in Madrid”). I prefer to understand it as another love declaration. A passionate one: you know what they say about Mediterranean people and Latin Lovers.

I must confess that at the beginning I could not understand why so much noise for a chicken. But now I have to admit that a giant chicken that travels all around the European Union, doing stripteases if the fans so require, and speaking so many languages (more than 25!) to get closer to the citizens, has a kind of a charm.