Latest Pirate Party Electoral Win: Saarland

Congratulations to the Pirate Party in Germany, for yet another win in a state government election.

This time, the PiratenPartei won 7.4% of the vote, making it over the 5% threshold required to enter parliament. They have been allocated 4 seats in the parliament.

The tally for the Pirate Party now stands at:

1. 2 MEPs (Pembers of the European Parliament)
2. 19 state parliament seats
3. 169 city/municipal council seats

And this could change with the two upcoming state elections in Germany over the next couple of months, as well as parliamentary elections in 2012 in Greece in April, France in June, Austria in September and Czech Republic in October. Plus, there are elections in around a half a dozen countries with active, unregistered pirate parties, where they might get registered in time.

Considering the PiratenPartei, in the Saarland election won 23% of first-time voters' votes, this is a very good sign that the overall vote of the party will grow, as time moves on. If the party can keep attracting first-time voters, and hold onto the people who have already voted for them, then they could potentially move from less than 10% of the vote up to around 20%, which would make them a major coalition candidate.

Now, I don't care about the Pirate Party winning for the sake of winning alone. I hope nobody will ever think of me as being so dedicated to a group that were it to stray from its ethical quest, that I would stick around. I think that's one of the differences between the Pirate Parties, and traditional, major political parties, which are really just a vehicle for power.

The reason that I am a member of the Pirate Party in Australia, and why I think it is so critical for them to win seats around the globe, is because of treaties like ACTA and the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement, as well as various domestic legislation in countries that allows for monitoring or innocent people, censorship, and the like. 

We are living in a time of massive incursions into our civil liberties, and it's only the Pirate Party movement that has taken the agenda of civil liberties and transparent governance as its core platform.