Cav's Place

Eleven years ago, I was listing who and what I voted for ever since getting the right to do so, and the plan was to make another such post at the end of last year, considering the number of elections we had in 2024 and the fact that the next ones were only supposed to be in 2028. But, of course, after the first round of last year’s presidential elections was annulled, those ended up being rescheduled for this year, and Nicusor Dan winning led to the need for elections for the position of Bucharest’s mayor. So it’s only after these also took place that I can finally post the list, the unpleasant thing being that, according to the law, these last elections should have taken place in September, so before the old ID card expired, but PSD kept throwing a wrench in the plans and they only took place on December 7, so I couldn’t have one more sticker properly placed on the back of that card and have it in the picture I took before just that remaining free corner of the card was cut off when I submitted the request for a new one. Still, since those stickers are no longer placed on the new cards, not even for those who, like me, choose to not switch to the electronic ones, when I voted I could ask the guy to place a sticker on the old card instead, even telling him to squeeze it just in the remaining space, next to the cut part… But he ended up placing it over an older sticker instead, and when I peeled it off and placed it in that empty spot on my own, part of that old sticker got torn off, so a new picture wouldn’t look quite right. But, still, I like the fact that I can show that I at least voted each time I had the option while I had that card, the 2004 general election, the last time when the parliamentary elections and the first round of the presidential elections took place on the same day, remaining the only time when I didn’t.
Sure, one’s vote is supposed to be secret, and I have seen people criticized or even threatened with legal action for making it public, but that mainly happens on the day of the elections, when it can justifiably be seen as campaigning, or when people with a certain degree of notoriety do it, since in that case it counts as an endorsement, while this is mainly for my own use and posted long after the fact… Perhaps too long, because I can’t remember my votes in some cases, so I’ll be listing more or less educated guesses and it’s not impossible that I’ll end up editing this post at some later point if I’ll somehow figure out that those guesses were wrong.

At least I do easily remember the oldest ones that need to be included in this post, the 2016 local elections, not that it’s hard, since I voted for Nicusor Dan for the position of Mayor of Bucharest, his USB party for the Bucharest City Council, their candidate, Roxana Wring, for the position of Mayor of Sector 3, and once again USB for the Sector 3 Local Council.

Since USB became a national party, renaming itself to USR, by the time of the 2016 parliamentary elections, I voted for them for the Senate at that point. However, my vote for the Chamber of Deputies was one of the 4295 that went to Remus Cernea, who ran as an independent in Bucharest.

Next comes the 2018 referendum that aimed to define marriage as explicitly between a man and a woman in the Constitution. Those who opposed the proposal called for a boycott and viciously attacked anyone who didn’t agree, the only hope of the proposal not passing being for the turnout to fail to meet the 30% threshold, but, as always, I did firmly argue against the call for a boycott and intended to vote no matter what. Still, if it appeared that it was touch and go, with the required turnout possibly just being reached right at the end, I had considered casting an invalid vote, so I once again waited for the last update and then, when it was clear that there was no danger of getting to 30%, I went and obviously voted no.

The 2019 European Parliament elections are the first ones that I’m not entirely certain about, since USR had been pretty much taken over by a group that I had serious issues with, and they also ran in an alliance with PLUS, while on the other hand Demos had made a doomed attempt to try to run, obtaining only 12028 out of the required 200000 signatures and obviously having their list rejected. But it seems that the only valid option was to vote for the USR-PLUS alliance anyway, and I do seem to remember that I was somewhat pleased with the activity of Ramona Strugariu, who’s the last person who made it through from their list and therefore the one for whom any additional vote made a difference. So I guess that I’m only mentioning the fact that I’m not entirely certain because I don’t have a very clear memory of the moment, but there doesn’t seem to be any risk of being wrong.

Moving on, or in fact not really, since it took place at the same time as the European Parliament elections, the 2019 referendum is another one that I’m not entirely certain about. It’s quite clear that I voted yes to the first question, about prohibiting amnesties and pardons for corruption offences, but the second one, asking about prohibiting emergency ordinances in the field of offences, punishments and judicial organisation and extending of the right to directly appeal to the Constitutional Court against the ordinances, was more complex and I had questions about the exact results of such a decision. It does seem that I’d have probably also voted yes in the end, but I don’t really know, so this will remain with a question mark, even if not that big of one.

Another question mark has to do with the first round of the 2019 presidential elections. I once again have no clear memory of who I voted for, and it doesn’t seem like I had any reasonable option for a protest vote, so did I vote for Dan Barna, even though he was the apparent leader, or at least the public image, of the group taking over USR, or did I vote for Klaus Iohannis even then, just to go through with it? Or did I cast a protest vote for a candidate with no chances after all, even if I don’t recall doing so and I don’t see who I might have picked? A vote for Barna probably seems most likely, at least if I also think that he was in third place and Viorica Dancila was a particularly weak candidate from PSD, so there might have been at least a small theoretical chance of him ending up second and therefore PSD not having a candidate in the second round, so I’m going to list that I voted for him unless I’ll find some information that’d clearly indicate otherwise, but I really don’t remember.

Either way, at least there’s no question about the second round of the 2019 presidential elections, when I obviously voted for Klaus Iohannis. Of course, it was once again a matter of choosing a lesser evil, but there was no question about it.

The 2020 local elections are easy when it comes to the position of Mayor of Bucharest, since I obviously voted once again for Nicusor Dan… But that’s about it, and it’s also as far as I got with this post before midnight, so the rest of this paragraph was added almost an hour later, starting with wondering whether I voted for USR-PLUS for the Bucharest City Council or I cast a protest vote. And I seem to remember doing something of the sort, but in that case, was it for the Green Party or for PER? I didn’t want Florin Calinescu, who had ended up being put forward by the Green Party at that point, to end up in the Council, but knowing that they had no chances of meeting the threshold, I might have given them the vote. But PER was even more certain to be nowhere near that threshold, so they were an even more risk-free protest vote. At this point I’m going to very hesitantly say that I might have voted for the Green Party for the Bucharest City Council, but it’s little more than a guess. And I’m not certain what I did for Sector 3 either, obviously being pissed that USR-PLUS had chosen to support PNL’s candidate in an attempt to have any sort of chance against Robert Negoita, which was a false hope and just ended up angering people who also rejected PNL for no real reason. Still, it seems likely that I complained but nevertheless did vote for that common candidate, Adrian Moraru, for the position of Mayor of Sector 3. But what I did about the Sector 3 Local Council is once again a good question. The Green Party didn’t have a list here, but PER did, and USR-PLUS also had one, separate from PNL, so did I vote for them, hoping to cast a useful vote, to perhaps add to the opposition to Robert Negoita, or did I still cast a protest vote, in which case it’d have been for PER? Thinking about it rationally, voting for USR-PLUS seems more likely, but that’s once again just a guess.

I only edited the post again in order to add what follows Friday evening, but that didn’t help with the fact that I really can’t remember who I voted for in the 2020 parliamentary elections. I know that I even told those from USR that it’s unlikely that I’ll vote for them, and both the Green Party and PER ran, but considering who was on those lists, did I really go through with such a protest vote, knowing that there was no “risk” of them meeting the threshold, or did I vote for USR-PLUS after all? There was also the big push among activists, especially the left-wing ones, for a vote for Valeriu Nicolae, who ran as an independent in Bucharest for the Chamber of Deputies, and he ended up a mere 17 votes short, but I had some issues with that and I’m pretty much certain that I didn’t vote for him, and I think that I remember the relief that he wasn’t a single vote short. So… I really don’t know. Despite Florin Calinescu still leading the Green Party at that point, the fact that they definitely had no chance probably means that they were my option for a protest vote and I can rule out PER, and this may be plausible. But I find it almost equally likely that I eventually went against what I had said and voted for USR-PLUS after all, maybe hoping that they’ll somehow manage such an unbelievably good result that even Florina Presada and Octavian Berceanu, who had been demoted to clearly ineligible positions under any plausible scenarios, would make it. Or I could have split my vote between the two… And it really pisses me off that I didn’t write such a post after these elections, when I would have remembered, especially since no other elections were planned until 2024…

At least it’s much easier with these recent elections, starting with the 2024 European Parliament elections, when Nicu Stefanuta ran as an independent, after having left USR, and voting for him was an easy choice. And it was so nice that, against all odds, he actually made it, just edging past the threshold.

At the 2024 local elections, I voted for Nicusor Dan for the position of Mayor of Bucharest, REPER for the Bucharest City Council, Lucian Judele for the position of Mayor of Sector 3, and the REPER-SENS-URS.PDF alliance for the Sector 3 Local Council. And, while Nicusor Dan winning again was such a relief, I must say that I was particularly pleased when I saw that REPER had created this alliance just in my sector and put someone from SENS in second spot, which ensured that she’ll be elected if they’ll go over the threshold. Not that I thought that they will, considering the higher requirement for an alliance, so I was even more pleasantly surprised when I saw that they actually did make it. On the other hand, I wasn’t that convinced by their list for the Bucharest City Council, and in fact can’t say that I can “retrieve” the specific memory of casting the vote for them, but I definitely wasn’t going to vote for the alliance that USR was in, and a protest vote for PER was also out of the question when their list was bafflingly led by a guy who had broken away from Nicusor Dan’s NGO and started fighting against his efforts to defend green spaces from developers. And I also didn’t exactly like to vote for the candidate supported by USR and that alliance for Mayor of Sector 3, but Lucian Judele could have been a decent option in himself, while on the other hand Ana Ciceala hadn’t only just recently given birth but also chose to double down on that by running as “primama”, which is supposed to be a mix between the words for “mayor” and “mommy” but also basically sounds like “first mommy”, and focusing her program on developing infrastructure for small children and their parents, so I most definitely wasn’t going to vote for her. Not that it mattered, with Robert Negoita not only somehow still winning, but doing so with over 50%.

Moving on to the annulled 2024 presidential elections, I ended up voting for Kelemen Hunor, and it was actually less of a protest vote than it appears, because I actually thought that, out of the particularly poor choices that were available, he and Cristian Diaconescu were the most suitable for the position under the present circumstances, and Hunor being the president of the party representing the ethnic Hungarians meant that he was also a great choice as a vote against the rising far right, which tipped the scales in his favor in my mind.

When I edited the post Friday evening, I forgot to add the 2024 local referendum from Bucharest, which took place on the same day as the annulled presidential elections, so I made one more edit in the early hours of Saturday, to add this paragraph as well. The questions put forward by Nicusor Dan were whether the Bucharest City Council should decide how tax revenue will be allocated, with the understanding that in that case more will be directed to the City Hall and less to the Sectors, and whether the Mayor of Bucharest should emit building permits for the entire city instead of each Sector doing so independently, and I voted yes to both. On the other hand, PSD demanded the addition of a third question in exchange for their support for the referendum, that being whether the Bucharest City Hall should fund and implement a drug prevention program in all of the city’s schools, and I voted no to that, because such a program should be funded and implemented nationwide, by the government, not by the city.

Getting back to what I added Friday evening, for the 2024 parliamentary elections I didn’t just vote with a clear conscience, but also cast positive votes, actually for my choices, not against others or as a protest. For the Senate, I voted for REPER, who had Octavian Berceanu at the top of their list in Bucharest and had also opened their lists for Demos, one candidate from there being in third spot. On the other hand, while Ana Ciceala led the list for SENS for the Senate and I still wasn’t going to vote for her, I definitely voted for SENS for the Chamber of Deputies… Sadly, neither reached the threshold, REPER doing particularly poorly, while SENS proved why the continued persistence of those who call for an electoral reform, including them, to merely demand lowering the threshold from 5% to 3% instead of removing it completely won’t do any good, because they obtained 2.84% for the Senate and 2.99% for the Chamber of Deputies. And in fact there were no parties between 3% and 5%, so such a change would have made absolutely no difference.

Getting to the 2025 presidential elections, so those that were actually validated, I voted for Nicusor Dan in both rounds, being so relieved when he somehow managed to snatch that second spot from Crin Antonescu in the first round and prevented me from having to vote for that guy in the second round just to be against something even worse.

And Nicusor Dan becoming president led to the need for new elections for the position of Mayor of Bucharest in 2025, where I was among the 804 people who voted for Dan Trifu, sticking to the choice I had made as soon as he announced that he was going to run and still not wanting to vote for Ana Ciceala, even though she was in SENS and had changed her speech and program since running in this sector, while at the same time dismissing the calls to cast a “useful vote” for Ciprian Ciucu. But I must say that Ciucu is definitely a far, far lesser evil than the other two who were seen as having real chances, so it is a relief that many did cast that useful vote and made him a clear winner, despite what the polls had listed all along.