German mayor joins Pirate Party
01/23 2009 | 05:13 PM
Posted by: Janko Roettgers
The German Pirate Party hasn't exactly been successful in its quest to legalize P2P and fight privacy violations, but the group has now picked up its first official elected representative. Jens Knoblich, mayor of the German town of Hohenstein, officially joined the Pirate Party this week.
Knoblich wrote on his website that the party's name initially confused him, but that he liked the fact that Pirate party activists are not career politicians.
Of course one reason for that may be that it's hard to make a career with pirate politics, at least in Germany. The Pirate party only got 0.3 percent of all votes in its first German state election contest, and it actually did even worse the second time around, only getting 0.2 percent of all votes in Hamburg's state election.
It's unlikely that Knoblich will provide the party with a huge support base. Sure, he is an elected official, but his hometown is quite small. Only 233 people actually voted during the last election.
(via gulli)
Knoblich wrote on his website that the party's name initially confused him, but that he liked the fact that Pirate party activists are not career politicians.
Of course one reason for that may be that it's hard to make a career with pirate politics, at least in Germany. The Pirate party only got 0.3 percent of all votes in its first German state election contest, and it actually did even worse the second time around, only getting 0.2 percent of all votes in Hamburg's state election.
It's unlikely that Knoblich will provide the party with a huge support base. Sure, he is an elected official, but his hometown is quite small. Only 233 people actually voted during the last election.
(via gulli)
emcq wrote:
In the just held second election within one year in Hessen(the politicans where not able to come to terms with each other and therefore they decided to let us vote again), the Piratenpartei-Hessen improved from the 0,3 percent form last year to 0,5 this year. Taking a look at the overall votes they nearly doubled there numbers form around 6800 to around 13500. Still a long way to go for the very young party.