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Re:Hacker facing an 8-year jail term for exposing vulnerabil... by gambiting on Monday February 04, 2019 @09:01AM (#19076385)
You do realise that every single EU citizen can vote for the EU parliament, right? It doesn't get any more democratic than this.
Re:Hacker facing an 8-year jail term for exposing vulnerabil... by misnome on Wednesday February 06, 2019 @07:24PM (#19101737)
I think you’ve thoroughly misread my post and it’s context. Please tell me where any citizen can vote for the European Comission - not parliament - which you can’t, because you do realize they are appointed by the heads of government in each country directly, which is why it’s wrongly targeted as “undemocratic”.

My point is that if you call that undemocratic then there is lots of thing probably much closer to home that you should also critisize - like appointed cabinets forming the government - at least in the UK, you elect a local representative - nobody anywhere voted for e.g. Jeremy Hunt to be foreign secretary, so wouldn’t you have to argue that that is undemocratic also?

Re:Hacker facing an 8-year jail term for exposing vulnerabil... by coldtea on Monday February 04, 2019 @11:05AM (#19077396)
You do realize that citizens were allowed to vote in all number of dictatorships, right?

Being able to vote is the bare minimum for a democracy, not its ultimate realization.

The accountability of elected officials, the procedures, who and when voted for those procedures, the processes used, etc., are more important than merely being able to vote.

In fact the mere decline in participation and lack of voter engagement is also indicative of the disconnect between Brussels and the national EU-voters.

I'm more left-of-center myself, but even the right-of-center Economist put it somewhat well (if mildly):

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2014/05/15/elected-yet-st...