Cav's Place

Largely for personal future reference, I’m taking this opportunity, at the end of a 2014 during which we had three rounds of elections and which followed a 2012 during which we had three others, to post a list of who and what I voted for at each round of elections ever since I turned 18. Or ever since I turned 19, more specifically, since the 2003 constitutional referendum was shortly after my birthday. Even delayed moving in with Andra by a few days for that, since the original plan was for me to go there just before it but I wanted to make sure it’ll all go well, without complicating matters by voting on an additional list, in a city that’s not the one I was registered as living in.
The 2004 parliamentary and first round of presidential elections marked the first and only time I had the right to vote and chose not to, since I was living in Iasi but never changed my address, so was still registered here in Bucharest, meaning I’d have needed to wait for hours in the main train station and fill in a form in order to vote there. Still feel rotten about that, but at least I went through it two weeks later, when I did vote in the presidential runoff. Obviously, I also didn’t vote in the 2004 local elections or in the 2005 early elections for the position of mayor of Bucharest, triggered by Traian Basescu becoming president at the end of 2004, but that was because the only way to do that would have been to come back here for the day, as you only have the right to vote at local elections in the place where you’re registered as living.

2003 constitutional referendum: Voted “no”, not because the new Constitution was worse than the old one, but because it was far from good enough and our authorities absolutely needed to change it to respect international agreements, so a vote against that proposal would have forced them to very quickly come up with a better one.
Of course, with all parties pushing for the changes in every way and the referendum stretching over two days, there was absolutely no chance of any result other than a landslide “yes” and some of those who wished for the same things I was were campaigning for a boycott instead, hoping for a turnout of less than the required 50%, but I couldn’t not vote and therefore went there to be one of the 8.94% who cast valid “no” votes. Besides, the number of valid “yes” votes was only 6030 less than the required turnout, and there were 148247 invalid votes, so obtaining the required turnout even in face of a complete boycott of those who didn’t quite agree with the proposals would have been no problem.

2004 presidential runoff: Voted for Traian Basescu, after spending a couple of hours in line at the main Iasi train station. Recall trying to analyze his alliance’s program, but couldn’t say anymore whether I believed I had any real reasons to vote for him specifically. What I definitely had were plenty of reasons to vote against Adrian Nastase and PSD and in favor of whoever seemed capable to stand up to them, so that’s what I did.

2007 presidential impeachment referendum: Voted “no”, and this time it was clearly a vote for Basescu, as he was not only truly battling PSD and their allies, but had also given me the impression of being a reasonably good president overall up to that point. Unfortunately, the amount of support he received at that time got to his head and his behavior and decisions started changing for the worse.

2007 European Parliament elections: We finally had a Green Party (PV) and they managed to gather the required number of signatures to participate, so I obviously voted for them. They ended up last, with all of 19820 votes, representing 0.39%, but for me they were obviously the only possible choice even if only because of the group they’d be part of.
Frankly, I don’t recall the voting system referendum that took place on the same day, but I must have voted, and in that case it must have been a “yes”, considering that the alternative was this mixed system we have now. In fact, I do remember advocating the system proposed through this referendum in 2008 as well, before actually realizing the sort of disaster it’d bring, as it’d have eliminated all but perhaps three parties. The bottom line is that they’re both bad, but in different ways.

2008 Bucharest local elections: Voted for PV all the way, so for mayor of Bucharest, Bucharest General Council, mayor of Sector 3 and Sector 3 Local Council, and at least they weren’t quite last anymore, though the results were still embarrassing. Listing in the same order, they received 1350 (0.25%), 4827 (0.91%), 247 (0.22%) and 521 (0.46%) votes, respectively.

2008 Bucharest mayoral runoff: This is another case of not clearly remembering who I voted for, but it must have been Vasile Blaga, since Sorin Oprescu was always supported by PSD and could therefore never be an option and I never cast an invalid vote.

2008 parliamentary elections: My first vote in parliamentary elections was under the new mixed system. In addition, these elections marked the first and so far only time when our Green and Ecologist parties ran together, under the name of the Green-Ecologist Party, and needless to say I was one of the 852 people from my electoral college, representing 1.68%, who voted for their candidate for the Senate. However, they did not have any candidate for the Chamber of Deputies in my electoral college, so there I voted for PDL’s candidate and former Minister of Environment Sulfina Barbu, who also won the seat.

2009 European Parliament elections: After going their separate ways once again very soon after the 2008 parliamentary elections, the talks of merger falling through, neither PV nor the Ecologist Party (PER) managed to gather the required number of signatures to run in these elections, and I clearly remember sending some angry e-mails to both of them to ask how could this happen. What I don’t remember quite so clearly is what I actually voted under those circumstances, in the sense of not having that specific mental image of the moment, but it must have once again been PDL, likely just as a way to oppose PSD, and I do seem to recall including the fact that their lack of activity forced me to do so in those e-mails I mentioned.

2009 presidential elections, first round: With Remus Cernea running for PV, these elections marked a moment when I knew and supported both the person and the party I voted for, and I also got more involved in the matter than ever before. Later events made me question that stance and at times, when the Greens ended up rejecting Remus and when he later ended up working with USL, I felt embarrassed and soiled by having supported them in the past, but things have gotten better after initially getting much worse, so at the moment I once again feel rather fine with being one of the 60539 people, representing 0.62%, who voted for him back then.
As for the parliamentary reform referendum that took place on the same day, I voted “yes” for both switching to a unicameral Parliament and limiting the number of seats to a maximum of 300, though in my view such a reform at a national level should, and must, only happen once we’ll have regional Parliaments as well, which is another thing I strongly advocate. And yes, that referendum had the required turnout to be valid and voters overwhelmingly backed both proposals, but the results were simply ignored.

2009 presidential runoff: Voted for Traian Basescu again. As the lesser evil, obviously, but I did what I could to try to persuade others to do the same, simply to avoid the other option. This also meant that I went firmly against the stance of those I supported in the first round, who publicly supported Mircea Geoana, but someone backed by PSD is definitely never an option.

2012 Bucharest local elections: With some activists throwing a fair amount of support behind Nicusor Dan, I voted for him as both mayor of Bucharest, where he obviously had no chance despite obtaining 8.48%, and General Council member. Sadly, the huge strategy error of focusing his meager resources only on promoting the fact that he’s running for mayor meant that many simply didn’t know they could vote for him in this other position as well, so he obtained 4.71% and therefore fell just shy of the 5% threshold which is required of independent candidates as well. That requirement is completely unreasonable, as an independent candidate can’t possibly fill more than one of the 55 seats, which is less than 1.82% of the total, but when he challenged this law he lost.
For Sector 3, I only voted for PV when it came to the Local Council, where they got all of 1403 votes, representing 0.85%, while for mayor I gave in and voted for incumbent Liviu Negoita (PDL), since the voting system for mayors was changed to a first past the post one and the priority was to avoid Sorin Negoita (USL) from taking over. Sadly, Sorin Negoita did win, and things since then have been perhaps even worse than I feared, especially in terms of his tireless assault on trees, parks and other green spaces. And no, there’s no connection between the two despite the identical last name, but this was definitely used by USL to confuse voters.

2012 presidential impeachment referendum: Once again, I voted “no” even though it was obvious that the vast majority will vote in favor of impeaching Basescu and therefore the only question was whether turnout will be high enough for the referendum to be valid. As such, it can clearly be said that those 11.15% of us who cast valid “no” votes helped the “yes” camp as well, but I will not refuse to vote. Either way, the 46.24% turnout was below the required threshold and therefore the greater evil of handing over all power to USL was avoided and I didn’t have to feel rotten for having helped that by my vote against it.

2012 parliamentary elections: With most parties joining one of the two large alliances, namely USL and ARD, there were few options left, but I was one of the lucky ones who at least had PER candidates to vote for, after PER backed out of the alliance with PV, the Greens’ Movement and USL at the last moment. Not something I’d otherwise care to do, considering what PER tends to stand for here, if anything at all, but at least I could continue to show support for a particular ideology at least in theory and was therefore one of the 1777 voters from my electoral college, representing 2.43%, who voted for their Senate candidate, and one of the 586, representing 2.49%, who voted for their candidate for the Chamber of Deputies.

2014 European Parliament elections: Taking a very firm and vocal stance against the United We Save movement’s call for a boycott of these elections, I once again voted for PV, since at least this time it was an option. They received all of 19148 votes, representing 0.34%. The very small difference between this result and the one obtained by them back in 2007 is interesting, and depressing, especially since they did slightly worse now than back then.

2014 presidential election, first round: With PV not fielding a candidate, PER choosing to take in and field William Brinza, who’s a former very conservative member of PDL, and no others that could at least in theory be said to represent this ideology in the running, I had decided as soon as I saw the full list of candidates to simply cast a valid “protest” vote. The idea was that I’ll look on the last page and, out of those that are on it, pick one of the group of five remaining after eliminating the six seen as relevant by the media, the two nationalists and the Hungarian separatist, even if those five also included Brinza.
Somewhat fortunately, the only one of the five who was on the second and last page was Constantin Rotaru of the Socialist Alternative Party, and I was sort of thinking of picking him as I was trying to actually choose someone to cast my “protest” vote for, before deciding to let the position choose for me. I definitely don’t want to show any support for the sort of Communist nostalgia that this party’s leaders exhibit, but the European group they’re members of does have some interesting ideas, even being at times called “greener than the Greens” recently, and the same thing can be said about their youth organization. As such, I was one of the 28805, representing 0.30%, who voted for Rotaru, who ended up next to last.

2014 presidential runoff: Once again simply voting against PSD and their candidate, I obviously had to vote for Klaus Iohannis of ACL. Thankfully, the greater evil was once again avoided, but now it remains to be seen how much of a lesser one Iohannis will be.