Swedes Cast Write-In Votes for SQL Injection, Donald Duck

An anonymous reader writes "The Swedish elections were held recently (the third Sunday of September to be exact) and it seems that a few people tried to interfere with the election by voting for parties which were in effect named to be SQL injection attacks or similar. Clever stuff! Little Bobby Tables in real life." That wasn't the only oddity of the election; reader MZeroOne writes: "The Swedish Election Authority published the results of last Sunday's general election and even though the current prime minister retained power, the candidate who got the most individual handwritten votes was Disney's Donald Duck." Maybe the existence of the Hard Alcohol Party (237 votes) helps explain why the Pirate Party didn't have a better showing.

Comments

For those who don't read XKCD.

[Dayofswords]

The 'Little Bobby Tables' reference:

"Exploits of a Mom"
http://xkcd.com/327/

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[FuckingNickName]

What every young, unrepresentative group of loud, idealistic men don't realise is that most people just want peace, a job and a house. And, if you spend your time employed rather than campaigning for the abandonment of the intellectual property concept, you will have enough money to pay for it anyway. And what you cannot pay for, you put on credit. And debt doesn't really matter... continue working hard and you can pay fast enough that no-one takes your stuff away... your government is not going to let civilisation collapse even if everyone else is in debt too.

Life has been easy for quite a while. And of course I want to exploit you if I have the intelligence to do so. And I want to protect my legal rights to make it possible, not to share. Then I'm even more secure and my surroundings even more luxurious.

Donald Duck

[BetterThanCaesar]

The Donald Duck party is an all time favourite joke vote in Sweden, but it is actually a registered party. They promise free alcohol and wider sidewalks. They don't have a budget for voting slips, but write-in votes are valid (if spelt correctly). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Duck_Party

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

Most pirates probably just vote for the green party (miljöpartiet) instead - they changed their policy to support filesharing after the pp got 7% in the EU election - because they are a mainstream party and there was no doubt that they would get in. How much of a difference this has made I don't know but they did do very well in the election.

Their internet-related policies

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[tenchikaibyaku]

As not all the ballots are counted as of yet it's possible that the final result will differ a few points, but it's worth noting that the Swedish Pirate Party basically seems to have retained its voters from the previous election:
2006: 0.63%
2010: 0.65% (preliminary)
This even though they were more or less absent from the public debate before the election.

I also think that the existence of a Pirate Party here in Sweden has managed to affect the public debate regarding piracy and privacy related questions more than what shows up in the polls.

For those who are American

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweden, is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe.

Re:For those who are American

[caluml]

Its capital is Bern, and they are famous for cuckoo clocks and Hitler.

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[mikael_j]

Actually, the grandparent (or rather, the people described in the post) missed the point. The point isn't "we can't afford stuff! stuff should be free! WAAAH!", it's about rights, personal integrity and in extension safeguarding a free and democratic society. However, most people would rather get a $50/year tax cut and not think so much...

And it really helps them when people from established political parties describe the pirate party as thieves, slackers and people who just want something for nothing. Makes it a lot easier to just think "I can afford stuff, I don't need stuff for free." while you vote for whoever promises you the biggest tax cut.

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[TheRaven64]

In the Cities of London and Westminster constituency, they got 90 votes in the last UK election. To put this in perspective, Mad Cap'n Tom, a joke candidate, got 84 votes in the same constituency. If the Pirate Party actually want to achieve something, then they need to start being constructive. A few suggestions:

• Change the name. Pirate Party makes them sound like a bunch of teenagers.
• Propose a sensible alternative to copyright, or propose a reasonable term for copyright. Their current proposals, if implemented, would cause significant damage to the economies of most western countries.
• Focus more on the privacy and security policies - people are more sympathetic to people who want to be left alone than to freeloaders.

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[vadim_t]

No, it's not about that.

I don't object paying for stuff. I pay for indie games, and donated to the musopen project and some others. Many of those are things I don't even have to pay for if I don't want to.

I object paying to parasites who want to create laws that will make it impossible for me to avoid paying them, because they want to introduce taxes on media, internet connections, and restrictions as to what my hardware can do. Simply not buying their stuff doesn't do it, because even if I don't buy or pirate a single CD they'll still put a tax on my hard disk and connection, throttle my torrent of CC licensed music, include DRM crap in my hardware, and prevent centuries old material from entering the public domain. If I don't buy, they'll say that I'm torrenting and use that as a justification for the things I've listed.

That bullshit has to be removed at the source, through laws that make it illegal and cut its funding. I'll gladly pay the artists, but I don't want to give a single cent to the parasites from the RIAA, MPAA and ASCAP.